Blood Poison
by Decantate
Summary: "'Don't say that,' he said, his golden eyes burning. 'Never say that, amora. You have your earring and I have my oath. Never say it.'" The story of a dark blood mage and her assassin, told vignette-style, birth to death. Rated for mild sex and violence.
1. Chapter 1

This is what she doesn't remember:

She is less than five, perhaps even as young as three years old. Her world is hunger and tucking herself into small corners and avoiding the great boots of the shem, but mostly hunger. She was weak and trembling with it the day that she went to the big marketplace.

Starved though she was, she spent some time in the shadow near the chantry's wall, licking her lip and watching a merchant's stall. He had baskets full of carrots and onions. Her belly gnawed at itself.

She stared at the merchant, willing him to sleep, forcing him to it. His head lolled to the side as slumber overtook him all at once, still standing. She had taken two darting steps toward the carrots when the templar who had been watching her the whole time picked her up off her feet.

She fought and twisted in silence, hitting and scratching, but the silver shem was so strong. Her heart was thumping swiftly in her throat when, in her desperation, her magic flew out of her in jagged forks of lightning. One blinding line touched the templar's eye. As he dropped her, more light crawled over her own small body and the pain consumed her. She blacked out before she hit the ground.

It was raining when she was given to the circle three weeks later. It would be nearly twenty years before she would feel the rain again.

* * *

This is what he does remember:

He was allowed a moment to dress before they took him. He stole another boy's shoes, too large, and into each he rolled an embroidered leather glove.

He felt the leather against his toes as he followed the men away from whorehouse. He was Dalish. He would not give them what they wanted.


	2. Chapter 2

It was late, but she doubted she would sleep soon. The chatter of the other female apprentices buzzed over her skin in her excitement and she covered her mouth to hide her own laughter. She was going to meet him tonight; they were going to try lovemaking while lying down for the novelty of it, instead of their usual quick trysts standing in corners. She imagined that, at nighttime, his dark skin might make him look like he was made of a shadow.

She went to the library to calm herself down, to wait. She pulled out a dusty-looking tome under the watchful gaze of the templar in the corner.

_They ordered him to strip beside the rack and he made bawdy jokes while doing so. One of the pair of Crows beside him was particularly handsome and he gave that one a wink. It earned him a slap on the side of his head, but it wasn't a painful one, wasn't like what was to come._

_He sat on the rack as if it were a comfortable couch, then laid back without fighting them. The ropes were thick and rough against the soft inner skin of his wrists. He complimented the less-handsome man on the make of his armor and asked him where it was made. The ropes on his ankles were tightened._

"Elvhenan." She had never read this word, never heard it. She had simply been told that elves had been slaves and were now free, so she should be particularly grateful to Andraste. The only sound in the library was the whisper of the page as it turned. Her lips parted as she leaned over the table to read.

_It had taken two cranks of the ratchet before the pretty elf stopped talking. His eyes were heavy-lidded as if it were pleasure he took from the rack and not pain, but this was not so. He felt his shoulder blades rub against the wood and focused on this small irritation as much as he could. He slowed his breathing, for his arms stretched so close beside his head made him feel as if his throat would close off. They turned the handle again, and he wondered if his knees would snap first or his shoulders. He closed his eyes entirely._

"_We will make you scream yet," said a voice beside him, deep and almost bored._

The elves had been immortal. Another page turned. It was they who taught the magisters how to use their magic. The Tevinter Imperium would never have been so powerful had they not learned their power from the elves.

The elves gathered wisdom in their cities while the humans yet lived in wandering tribes of barbarians. As her lover gave up his search and went back to bed, she read on.

_The crank was so noisy as it was turned another notch and it was this rusty noise that filled the room when his right shoulder resisted, then tore from its socket. He felt several things snap, one after another, and his mouth turned a rictus around the screams that he kept silent. They left him like that for several minutes. Eventually he was able to force his breathing to calm again, though his face tilted toward the crippled shoulder._

"_It is enough," said a new voice in the corner. "He can have healing magic. We will not kill this one."_

_When they unbound him he found he was no longer able to walk. His head, however, he could still hold high and it was with clear eyes that he left the room as a Crow._

That night, when she finally slept, her dreams were of golden-haired elven warriors, their blades flashing like silver in the sun.


	3. Chapter 3

How she does it:

Anders sat in the corner of the room at a table, and along came Irving's star apprentice, five minutes early. She smiled at him in a laughing way that made her whole face light up, her whole body, and he sighed quietly through his nose while smiling back.

"Please at least _try_ today?" he said. "Just a little? Just for me? Come on, you're doing horrors for my reputation." Someone had decided that she needed to be tutored in a healing spell, something that he rather had a knack for. She, on the other hand, was very gifted at anything that made explosions, fires, or holes in things. He hadn't told her his history, but he'd been recaptured for the second time over six months ago and it was a mark of the Circle's growing forgiveness that he'd been allowed to tutor an apprentice at all.

Her smile grew wider as she chose a chair right beside him, rather than one across the way. "I'll try. Just for you," she answered, and though he knew she wasn't quite close enough for it to be so, he imagined that he felt the heat of her body along his thigh.

He looked down at her face as if trying to see if she was serious, but really, he was just looking at her. She wasn't hideous or anything, but it was her constant laughter and the way she seemed to look at him as if he was the most interesting thing in the world that made her so lovely. He'd seen that she had the same effect on nearly everyone, but he was mostly certain that she honestly was eager for him.

"Here," she said briskly. She gripped her chair and scooted it closer until her small thigh really was resting right along his larger one, as if this position were somehow necessary for learning. She reached for a nearby pen and jabbed the nib into her finger.

Palm up, she rested her hand on the table and studied the bead of blood. "I'm going to heal this."

"You are, yes. Knit things together. Magic isn't just tearing them apart." His voice was jovial, but he felt the knots grow in his stomach from excitement. He felt as if he were fourteen all over again and breathless.

"Yes. It isn't," she agreed. They both stared at her blood. He felt a very small surge of magic from her and imagined that perhaps the bleeding had slowed a little, just before she settled her other hand on his robes directly over his erection.

They spent a moment in contemplative silence together, still looking at her little wound. "That doesn't help you learn, you know," he drawled out, his voice gone throaty.

"Not true," she answered, and with a glance he observed that the little flirt was starting to blush, despite how impish her voice was. "It helps me concentrate."

"You are a _liar_," he accused, and then gave up. "Oh, I don't even care." He cast the spell to heal her finger before dipping his head to nip at the side of her throat. She shivered. He pulled her under the table with its blessedly long tablecloth (the reason why he tutored her in this room). It was his turn to shudder a moment later as her fingers clutched fistfuls of his shaggy, growing-out hair and her warm mouth closed over his earring, teeth touching his skin.

Some time later she was perched atop him under the table, both of them just starting to breathe normally once more. Her fingers scratched gently down his damp chest and she watched his face, looking for all the world like a cat full of cream. Her many pigtails were askew and he studied how her hair turned auburn where it was wet. She was his first elf and, despite how they'd been intimate twice before, he still felt a bit of relief that he hadn't hurt her. She looked so small.

"I'm so very, utterly, ecstatically glad that you don't want to learn healing," Anders said with a smirk.

Her own smile faded a little. "I'll be leashed my whole life. I don't want to bark exactly like how they tell me to." Her voice was low and bitter; this was a side of her that Anders hoped Irving didn't see in his apprentice.

Anders ran his hands slowly down her thighs, his mind full of things that he would not say to her. He reached up and squeezed her bottom and said cheerfully instead, "Come on, let's get dressed before they catch us. I'll see you the day after tomorrow and fail to teach you again, my dear lady!"

That night there was a slip-up in the guard that gave Anders the opening he was looking for. He was gone.

How he does it:

Taliesen's black fog of sleep was slowly being pierced, and this was unwelcome—he felt the beginnings of a small hangover to come with wakefulness. A hand was stroking over his hip and a mouth was moving over the stubble at his chin. He cracked one eye just enough to see blonde hair above him and he groaned. "Zev, go _away._"

"You do not mean this, my handsome friend," murmured the elf as fingers moved to stroke circles over the inside of Taliesen's thigh. Taliesen felt himself responding and tried to push Zevran away, whose hand slipped up to stroke loosely, encouraging the response. "I have a very interesting story which I think you will be delighted to hear."

Zevran's fingers moved yet again, going between Taliesen's thighs, and he continued talking before his friend responded. "It is the funniest thing. I am on this job, you see," Taliesen recalled through the diminishing fog of sleep that Zevran has been gone for five days now, "and I have the perfect place to kill the woman, but she is the most terribly suspicious person, for every door seems to have five locks. This last door has a lock that—"

"No, no, NO," Taliesen groans, his eyes pinching shut. "It's _your_ job. I didn't go with you this time. _You_ figure out the damned—" and he stops, back arching, as two of Zevran's fingers slip into his body and then bend at just such an angle.

Zevran's teeth close over Taliesen's earlobe while he massages that place inside of his friend's body. Taliesen's muscles strain and sweat pricks all over his skin. Zevran's mouth moves slowly down, the rough back of his tongue laving a nipple, his teeth now on Taliesen's abdomen.

And then he stops, delicately kissing Taliesen's navel, his fingers halting their movement and only just shifting a little now and then. Taliesen squirms. "Zev!" He says. "_Zev!_"

"Yes, my friend?" Zevran's voice is low and damn him, Taliesen can feel his smile.

"Fine, _fine,_ dammit! I'll go look at the locks!" Zevran's fingers crook again insistently and he swallows Taliesen's whole length, squeezing the head in his throat, _Maker_ but he was so good at this. Taliesen climaxes at once directly into Zevran's throat.

Taliesen is heaving for breaths a few moments later. He swallows once and says. "You're a real bastard, you know that?"

Zevran clucks his tongue as he lays his head on his friend's shoulder. "Come my friend, such hurtful insults. I am only a very probable bastard, not a real one." And he smiles.


	4. Chapter 4

_Jowan was an idiot. She lay on her new bed, face in the pillow with a book beside her in case anyone walked by. Her friend the idiot could get away from the tower if she freed him._

When Taliesen told him in whispers of what Rinna had done, Zevran's mouth curled as if he had tasted something foul. He had been afraid that his desire for the lass would make it easy for him to fall into a trap of her making, and he was grateful that his friend Taliesen was not an idiot.

_The walls seemed to close around her like a fist. She was a mage; it meant almost nothing. The only thing that she owned about herself was her life, her free will, and chances were that she would never be able to use it outside of this tower._

"You are a traitor to the Crows," said Zevran. "Filth that I would not even touch my boots with." Rinna fell to her knees and began to beg. Beautiful lies spilled from her beautiful mouth.

_Jowan ran off. Neria stood there, trying to find a false smile for Irving's benefit, and looked over the bloody templars at her feet. She regretted nothing._

Rinna watched Zevran with her shining eyes until the moment life left them. The pool of her blood spread at his feet. He regretted _everything._


	5. Chapter 5

1.

The boat on the lake rocked as it was rowed across and the water shone white just beside her. When they walked among the trees she would keep her hands before her, watching the way the shadows would split and ripple over her fingers. Once, they were accosted by bandits. Neria flung bolts and shards of lightning at the men quickly, having it in her mind to protect Duncan from them, but he killed most of them without allowing them near her.

For the rest of her life, the scent of a campfire would sometimes bring to mind the first campfire she knew—with Duncan, listening to him talk in his low voice about mages and the chantry.

2.

She was wandering around Ostagar, absurdly relishing her first sunburn, when a man called her over. He asked her for some armor and added, "Why are you dressed so preposterously?" Another man on the other side of camp asked her to run messages. Disoriented, she finally found Alistair and was just starting to laugh at his jokes when he said this:

"I don't suppose you happen to be another mage?"

It turned out he was a templar.

3.

Her three companions were all gibbering as the wild woman came down toward them (even Daveth, who was being swiftly downgraded in her mind from 'potential romantic interest' to 'still better than Ser Jory' for it). Morrigan walked without fear. Morrigan had no phylactery in Denerim .

Neria took the treaties back to Duncan, thrilled at having met her.

4.

"And then this last one, which nobody wishes to take. Grey Wardens in Ferelden. "

Zevran opened his mouth. "I wish to make a bid for this mission." The blackness within him roiled and curled around those words, satisfied.

5.

Alistair finds himself watching Neria one night at camp soon after the business with the Arl's son. Tonight, she had eaten supper in silence not far from Sten and now she was laying out her bedroll nearer to the giant's than anyone else's. She laughed at Alistair's jokes, shared memories about Duncan, seemed interested in everything he said, but she slept nearest to Sten as if she felt safer there.

6.

Zevran groaned when consciousness was forced upon him and he found he was at least a little glad that he wasn't dead. Through the haze of his stabbing headache he looked up at the Wardens and, after having fought them, was not surprised that it was the elven woman who asked the questions.

She was the color of sunset, with that red hair and the warm tones in her skin, but the hollows in her cheeks made it difficult to gauge if she was old or young. Young, he thought, at her quick laughter to some of the things he said. She watched him with such fascination and focus that he found it easier to tell her everything honestly. When he offered his services to her she smiled and accepted.

She soothed her fellow Warden when he protested and laughed again when Zevran complimented the human archer's beauty. This woman who he had just tried to kill then offered her hand to him and helped him stand.

All at once Zevran felt the urge to live grow stronger than it had for months and so he said as forcefully as he dared, "I hereby pledge my oath of loyalty to you until such a time as you choose to release me from it. I am your man without reservation. This, I swear."

And _again_ she laughed.


	6. Chapter 6

On the first day Zevran decided to bed Neria as soon as possible to secure his position in the group, though he thought Leliana would be the better lover.

On the second night Zevran listened in as Wynne told Neria a story about the Grey Wardens. When Neria at last turned away, Zevran thought he saw a hardening to her mouth.

On the third day they were attacked as they walked. Both Sten and Alistair had to work hard to keep the creatures from felling Neria as she rained lightning and fire down on them like the Maker's own wrath. Afterwards the following conversation occurred:

"It is a pleasure to serve such a deadly goddess as yourself, my dear Warden."

"It must be! Did you see the eyes of that last hurlock as it died? Filled with gratitude that my face was the last thing it saw. And you, my dear assassin, have the pleasure of living while being around me! How the darkspawn must envy you."

"Ah, and now I fear that you have thought I was only teasing you."

"Why would I think that? Lovely, powerful, learned, with enough mercy to spare your life? Why shouldn't I think this is a pleasure for you?" And she winked at him before moving to join the others.

On the third night Neria left the communal campfire for Morrigan's. Zevran watched the faces of the others. Their eyes all followed their leader's form, and when the two distant women laughed loud enough together for it to be heard by the rest, at least two people scowled.

As they walked on the fourth day Leliana spoke with her. Neria contributed little to the conversation, but laughed often at Leliana's descriptions of Orlais and inserted encouraging questions whenever the chatter faltered.

On the fourth night Neria spoke mostly with Sten and shared the first watch with the giant. Alistair bent over his tasteless stew, silent and tense as they left. Zevran wondered if the qunari or the templar would be his chief rival.

On the fifth day Neria walked close beside Alistair and spoke with him in low and gentle words. Alistair stumbled over his own replies and she looked down, idly sparking lightning between her thumb and forefinger as he made his shy advances.

On the fifth night Neria approached Zevran at camp. He told stories to her of his past and never once did she flinch when he spoke of his blade sliding into flesh. She pulled the words off of his tongue like a ribbon from a spool, and on the fifth night Zevran wished to bed Neria to see how the fascination in her eyes would change when his fingers slipped into her mouth.


	7. Chapter 7

Zevran is trying to have a perfectly friendly conversation with Sten, which is about the same thing as trying to talk to a tree, but what else is he to do? He has already tormented Alistair four times today and the ease of it was starting to bore.

So yes, he was having a monologue with Sten when their fearless and beautiful leader started shouting across the camp. And now she was stalking off into the forest and Leliana was looking as if she had accidentally spat in Andraste's soup, so Zevran slides gracefully off of the log and makes for the trees.

He was stopped suddenly by an enormous hand on his shoulder. "Where are you going?"

Zevran twisted out of Sten's hand just a moment before it started tightening. "Now come, my friend, she cannot be alone in the wilds. You saw how it was; nearly she was eaten in Denerim."

"And _you_ are the one who will go after her," Sten says flatly, looking down the long way from his nose to the elf, his violet eyes so unnatural.

Zevran slips one foot behind another to try to slink away and says quickly, "If she took me along then surely you would agree it is her own responsibility to face whether or not I am lying about my loyalties, which I am not, I might add."

There is a pause before Sten finally grunts. "But if you kill her, you will die."

Zevran is gone so swiftly that he doesn't even hear it.

* * *

All Neria knows is that she's far enough from the camp to barely even see the shadows cast by the distant fire when suddenly there is an assassin there, his arms folded and leaning up against a tree and grinning. She startles and stops all at once. He steps forward gracefully, spreading his hands to show that they are empty.

"How do you do it?" she demands of him, as if continuing a conversation. "Just—ooh! Ooh I hate them sometimes."

"How do I do what?" Zevran asks smoothly. "And what has the lovely sister done to upset you so? I daresay that she is the most pleasant one among your companions, excluding myself of course."

And their cheerful, witty leader looks down at the ground and pushes her boot beneath some old leaves, muttering. "She was talking about the elves in Orlais. How they dress up and sing and are so happy serving. Like trained dogs. I hate her. I really _hate her._"

Zevran's brows rise as the venom in those words. "Surely you are not so very surprised at this? You have been an elf your whole life long, yes?"

She sighs quietly again. "No, there was an accident in the tower when I was fourteen. This is still new to me."

Zevran is actually thinking this over when he catches her sidelong glance and he laughs, long and rich.

"You believed me!" she accuses through his laughter, delight suddenly overcoming her rage. "You did! Ah, you people outside of the tower are so gullible!"

"I ought to have known!" Zevran says again, leaning back against the tree and laughing as hard as he remembers ever doing, his words broken up between his gasps. "Wynne already told me that you do not have orgies atop of your towers."

"She did? Agh." Neria jerks her hand toward the sky. "I had only just undergone my harrowing. I didn't know that one wasn't true." She leans back against a tree and looks upward. The moonlight slants across half of her face and Zevran's gaze traces over her features as he might study a fine bottle of wine before opening it.

He steps toward her and lifts his fingers toward her cheek. Her eyes drop to his face and skittishly she steps away. His smile curves again, tilted on one side higher than the other. "I promise that your nights will become so much warmer and there will be pleasures that you have never dared to imagine."

She doesn't even seem to flush, this is delightful about her, but answers at once. "Making love to a mage will turn you into a toad, I am afraid. This is how we do it."

"This I know is not true. I will never believe anything you say now, I am afraid. I have been with a mage before."

"You have? Honestly?" And with those three words Zevran's smile widens; he knows the matter is a foregone conclusion and he need only dance the steps she desires to win her. She has excellent taste, he muses, while moving three steps back.

"Indeed. She was a mark and I made love to her before I killed her. She desired it. I am not heartless and I gave her what she wished before she died."

Neria's mouth pops open in a startled laugh and she turns away—she would not do this, expose her back to him three weeks ago. "You are a paragon of mercy and kindness. I have much to learn from you." And then she reaches out to him, stroking her fingers down stray hairs at his temple as she walks past him. He is still, watching her, eyes half-closing with it, then stretches his hand out to her. He touches the edge of her sleeve but she pulls away from him and is moving, a shadow that he follows through the darkness.


	8. Chapter 8

Zevran was beside the door, daggers drawn, watching for movement outside. He heard the clatter of someone trying to open a chest that was locked and, because he was listening for it, heard Leliana take two whisper-soft steps toward the chest.

"Zevran, do you know how to pick locks?" Neria asked unexpectedly.

Leliana's steps stopped. Zevran turned his head and smiled. "Of course. I would be a poor assassin if I didn't."

It took him nearly twice as long as it would have taken Leliana, but the lock was popped open. He spent more time practicing the skill after this.

* * *

There were many, many archers against them. Three arrows were sticking out of Sten's armor, one out of Alistair's. Wynne was casting spell after spell upon the men, but her lined face was growing haggard. Neria tossed lightning from one hand to the next and the air bloomed with a metallic taste. A whole field of lightning fell upon the archers to sting them all at once. Their eyes turned to her. Alistair began to run.

She took the first arrow through her leg as she started to turn away. The second was better aimed and went through her belly, ripping out beside her spine. She fell, and still more arrows were coming.

Alistair finally reached her and threw his body over hers. His shield came up to cover them both while he roared for Wynne, Morrigan, anyone please. Morrigan came and tucked herself into the small space between Alistair and Neria. He heard her hiss curses to Neria about what a foolish girl she was, so stupid not to hide before casting, but he did not see how the witch cradled Neria's head so gently as her other hand moved over the elf's body in haste.

* * *

"You must wear armor and learn to fight better than that. You should think twice before using magic. It is foolish."

This is the first thing Neria heard upon opening her eyes. Sten was sitting beside her bedroll.

"I won't stop using my magic. I don't believe that I am able to." She tried to sit up and it was Leliana's gentle hand that lifted her. "You are right about the armor, but I don't think I've seen any my size."

"This is because Fereldens do not make armor for young boys."

"Stop, Sten, all of these compliments, you are making me blush." She heard Zevran chuckle quietly somewhere near.

"I can alter some leather for you," Leliana says cheerfully while stroking her hand up and down Neria's back. "It is not so difficult."

"I want a shield too." Neria's smile for Leliana is a warm one.

"You cannot fight as our dashing Alistair does, if this is what you are thinking." Zevran crouches very near to the two women. "Come, rest, and tomorrow I will teach you how to fight as I do, yes?"

"Yes," Neria agrees, but she looks up under her lashes at Alistair, his shield strapped behind him. He flushes and looks away.

* * *

They are camped within an ancient and freezing temple of stone when Zevran is given a watch with Neria. The others are sleeping within a room and the two elves are at the end of the hall, weapons held loosely, Neria in her patched robes as her new armor is not yet ready. Zevran was speaking low to Neria, trying to shock her.

Neria was hiding her smile. "In all of Thedas, truly, do you think? There is not a more skilled lover even in Orlais? Maybe I should ask Leliana and see if she agrees." And now her smile comes, almost wolfish. "Maybe I should _try_ Leliana. Make you watch. You can tell me if she is better. And I will see how you perform with Morrigan."

Zevran laughs long and low, stalking toward Neria. She backs away, turning in the hall while facing him, a light in her eyes. "Morrigan? Ah, but then you would be so envious I think, that she should have such a treat while you do not."

"You think that _I_ should try you? Zevran, you should have made your intentions plain." He moves quickly, three long steps and she is still pulling back, but he catches her. He dips his head and lowers his mouth to hers.

She stops moving away. Their lips brush, then at the same time they open, tongues electric as they touch for the first time. His hands slide down her back to the base of her spine and he pulls her closer to him. She releases a quick breath and worries at his lower lip while her hands slide down his arms. They are still kissing as she grips his wrists and pulls his arms away from her body. She holds him there, does not allow him to touch her.

He deepens the kiss and her back arches, fitting her whole body against his from breast to rib to belly to hip, her feet on tiptoe between his. Her head tilts and her mouth works against his as if starved, but then she breaks away with a quiet gasp.

The temple feels so cold when she is gone from him. He opens his eyes to find her several steps away, lips parted with her own fingertip tracing over the slickness of the lower one. Her eyes are half-closed and her desire he reads in the darkness there.

She does not allow him to close the space between them and within ten minutes she talking and laughing with him as before. He does not touch her again before the watch is over.


	9. Chapter 9

He had her pinned against the wall and they were both gasping into the other's mouth. He parted her legs with a knee, pressed against her until he could feel her heat and even her wetness on his thigh. Her leg twined around his. He rolled his hips into her and, smoothly, she followed the motion, rolling her hip against his arousal. _ I will take her to dance with me in the streets of Antiva City one day_, he thought.

He gasped again into the kiss at this thought, and those that tumbled after. Rinna spinning in a thin skirt—he caught her hands from behind to set the dip of his hips against her own as she moved. Rinna's quicksilver eyes flashing as she moved away. Rinna, Rinna dying. He spat in Rinna's face for the weakness she gave to him, this weakness come to him again in the Warden.

He moved his hand down Neria's head, curled his fingers behind her neck and tucked his thumbs beneath her jaw.

He saw it. Neria's body on the floor, her neck snapped sideways and him free of this recklessness. His heart lifted; he would be swiftly gone and her companions would not find him. He would be free.

He was panting as if catching his breath when he opened his eyes again. His brow was on her shoulder and he felt her fingers moving in gentle strokes down the nape of his neck. She was shorter than Rinna; he felt this. Her bosom was much smaller than Rinna's and her skin smelled of rain and fire instead of perfume. He stroked the backs of his fingers up and down Neria's soft throat. Her skin there was whole, smooth, and her blood pulsed within her: this was different from Rinna now, too.

He lifted his head to press a hard kiss to her temple. _I am your man without reservation. This, I swear._


	10. Chapter 10

"What is that?" Neria's voice was so sharp that Zevran drew both of his blades and turned quickly, only to find her pointing at the night sky between the trees. He looked up, eyes quick. A dragon, perhaps? "Is that something that the trees do?"

"What?"

"That—the white—oh, is that _snow?_" And now her voice was becoming eager. "I've never seen natural snow before!" She was reaching up, dancing on her toes, and he saw it, the first snowflake of the season, out of her reach. He laughed and sheathed his blades. "Catch it, Zev!" she demanded, so he did, stepping forward to close his hand around the little thing.

"Let me see." Neria stepped close to Zevran and opened his curled fingers. He found himself smiling at her as she bent her head over his hand.

"It is melted to water, you know. This is what snow does, or so I have heard."

"So quickly?" She sounded disappointed. "Mage snow lasts longer." She sighed, and he felt the bead of water tremble inside the joint of his middle finger. She bowed her head closer and touched it with her tongue. He curled two fingers and slid them into the warmth of her mouth.

Later, he would lie in the darkness of his tent, sure that he had exhausted them both beyond moving any further. He would feel her fingers run down the damp skin of his chest. Little sparks of blue would trail her touch, pricking his skin and making his muscles twitch. _One more time, _he would think with a tired moan, and roll into her body again.

* * *

"Why?" It had been three days since Alistair had really spoken to Neria, so this sudden pained word made her look up at him, startled.

"Why what?"

"Why everything? Why did you give the rose back to me? Why did you take it in the first place? Why him and not me?" Alistair was looking down at her as if his whole heart were breaking as they walked. "You must know that he might kill you. I would _never_ hurt you, Neria, _never._ " For a brief moment, she was able to look into his eyes, beyond the templar and the round ears and the bastard prince and see Alistair, gentle and kind and good.

Horrible responses ran through her mind. _Funny story! You'll laugh. I'm secretly a blood mage!_

_Magic is sinful and… no._

_I'm really not into humans at all anymore. If I hear 'knife-ears' one more time I'm blasting all of you into a crater._

_You want love and Zevran asks nothing. _

He was just starting to look away with a sigh when his attention was drawn back by her answer. "You want something that I can't give. I'm sorry." She moved quickly to leave him behind.

_I would run faster from the templar's blade without love. I would be free._

* * *

On the Deep Roads, Neria screamed her loathing to the darkspawn. The air around her filled with her light as she stepped partly into the Fade and as she formed lightning storms. She threw herself at them as blindly as Ogren did. On the Deep Roads, Neria stopped using the words _Grey Warden_ to mean 'I am free from the Circle' and started using the words to mean 'I will kill you and all your filth and give my life to see that the last of you is dead.'

* * *

It was in the dead trenches that Neria first knew that she loved him.

She was restlessly sleeping in the small alcove that they had chosen for camp. She had not been talkative for days and had to bite her tongue to keep from snapping at everyone. She felt filthy. Grime on every part of her, grime on the floor, darkspawn blood and disgusting fluids everywhere. She felt the call of their darkness strongly here, almost understood the song of the demon sometimes. She ate little and once had vomited off of a ledge when the cry of the dragon coiled strongly around her stomach.

So it was uncomfortably that she rested there, in chainmail now, thicker armor. Though she had avoided touching or looking at Zevran for days, he came to her as she rested and curled himself around her back. His head bowed and his brow touched her nape between her helm and her collar. He draped an arm over her hip and she felt his whole body relax with a sigh. And she knew that she loved him, in much the same way that a sick man knows he will die.

* * *

Zevran woke to find Neria peering with concern into his face, light shining subtly beneath her skin.

"What?" he said, voice rough with sleep. She didn't answer right away but reached up to touch his forehead.

"I don't like you sleeping in such a blighted place," she answered abruptly, her eyes grown darker with concern. "I don't want you to get sick."

Zevran cleared his throat from the sleep and caught a yawn before it escaped. "We have managed thus far, yes, and we have healing magic." He opened his eyes again to find her still studying him intensely.

Her voice became low. "I would not have hurt come to you if I can help it. I would protect you."

He reached up then and touched her face. Some pain came to her eyes and his hand slid to the back of her neck. He pulled her close to kiss her brow. "It is I who will be looking after your back, I have said_._"

They spent perhaps two heartbeats looking into the other's eyes and at the same time they both flinched their glance away. She stood and walked toward Morrigan, leaving him behind with a feeling of disquiet for company.


	11. Chapter 11

The feeling of disquiet lingered after they had returned to the dwarven city, after she had chosen a king. She forgot, sometimes, to stop walking in the Fade and the dwarves would flinch away and whisper about her, for she looked like a spirit. Zevran had never seen such a thing. She did not seem mortal anymore, but like something perhaps from the ancient cities of the elves.

So that night when she came to his room he took out his ropes and taught her some things that she had not learned yet from her lovers in her Circle Tower. What she had learned in that Tower of hers was to make love in absolute silence, but in that night in Orzammar he broke the leash on her tongue. By the time that he finally covered her body with his he was quite satisfied that she was only a woman, smaller than him, and mortal as can be.

* * *

Alistair dropped an armful of logs and tossed two on the campfire, which spat up sparks into the darkness. He looked again at Morrigan's camp. "I don't like it," he said. "And they're always drinking over there. What are they drinking?"

"I actually did ask Neria that once," answered Zevran, who moved closer to the warm fire while mending his leathers. Alistair shot him a brief, baleful glare just for the principle of the thing. "Morrigan makes really good tea, she said."

"I think it's sweet that they're such good friends," Leliana said.

The two distant women laughed together and it had a bit of a wicked tone to it. Alistair glanced to see Neria bent over her cup in mirth. "They sound like a pair of witches."

"Neria is a _Circle Mage_." This was Wynne's calm but firm contribution.

"Tell me, which is worse?" Zevran asked with a smirk, kicking a stick into the flames. "Her association with the apostate or the assassin?"

"The apostate," answered Wynne, at the exact same time that Alistair said, "The assassin." Zevran laughed.

* * *

"What's in a witch's brew anyway?" Alistair asked when Neria finally joined them.

"I don't know. You know me and plants. Nothing matches the illuminations in books. Maker, but it's cold." Neria seated herself near the fire and put her hands out to it. She screwed up her nose a little. "There were… round things…? Tonight? Berries?" Suddenly her eyes lit up. "Maybe they were frog's eyes! Wouldn't that be interesting!"

"You're _horrifying_," Alistair replied. "Also you're joking with me. You're joking. Aren't you?"

Neria threw him a coy look that made his heart twist in his chest and he shook his head, looking down.

* * *

All of his careful tying was for nothing because something was opening the flaps of his tent and snow was blowing in but he wasn't even going to look because he had finally gotten warm under his blankets and also he hated Ferelden winters more than he had ever hated anything in his entire life.

"Zev? Can I sleep with you?" It was Neria. This cheered him a bit.

"But you never sleep with anyone, my dear Warden!" His voice was muffled but the humor in it was clear. "You have said this many times. Boot me out of your tent and leave me weeping my lonely tears for the rest of the night. You are a cruel woman."

"Please, Zev, _please,_ I am so cold! Please please—"

"Fine, fine, come in!" He sounded both exasperated and triumphant at once and she darted in, kneeling over his covered knees as she tied the flaps shut again. Off went her boots and she slipped under his blankets like an eel. A frozen eel. Made of ice.

And the crazy thing was, even though he had finally just managed to warm up, he threw his arm and leg over her and pulled her close to his body. She put the frozen tip of her nose against the hollow of his throat and he liked that. He kissed her hair and he liked that, too.

"I never should have left the Tower. When this Blight business is over I am going to Antiva—It is very warm in Antiva?"

"Yes, it is very warm there." He felt sleepy again already.

"I am going to Antiva and turning brown in the sun and living as a dancing girl."

"You always have the cleverest plans, _amora_."

She fell asleep as soon as she was warm but Zevran stayed awake a little while yet, holding her quite close to him, thinking about the word that he had not meant to use.


	12. Chapter 12

Alistair returned to the campsite, his arms loaded with wood. He counted the tents; it appeared that tonight Zevran and Neria would sleep apart. Leliana would lose the bet to Oghren.

Neria called from across the clearing, "First watch with me tonight, Alistair?"

"Er.. yes," he said as he stacked the wood, hearing the surprise in his own voice.

* * *

"I was thinking about Goldanna." Neria sounded as awkward as he felt when they were alone. She lifted her hand toward a firefly in the warming spring night, curiosity briefly in her eyes, and his love for her felt like a sore tooth when prodded by the tongue.

"What, her? Wasn't that, what, a year ago winter? Worried that we forgot her birthday?"

Didn't even get a smile out of her. She turned, playing with her gauntlets in a fidgety way and avoiding his eye. He became tense. "Well I was thinking about family to tell you the truth," she said. "You know, I was too young to remember my family and I was thinking, you know, about our joining? My joining, I mean."

"Your joining," he repeated slowly. "Neria, what is this about?"

"I remembered the other night about what you said." She continued in a forging-on-despite-the-odds way. She was rather reminding him of himself. " At the ritual. You said, 'Join us, brothers and sisters.' You called me sister." Her eyebrows lifted and she finally looked at him. "And I was thinking about what you said it was like with the other Wardens. And we share blood, in a way," she added insistently. "We have the same type of blood."

She stopped as if to catch her breath. "Did you bump your head or something?" he asked, leaning against a tree and starting to smile. "I don't remember you ever being quite so eloquent."

"Shut up," she said briskly. "What I mean is, look, I'll come right out and say it. We're family, I think. You called me sister the first day you knew me." Was she turning red? "So you're my brother. I mean, you can be my brother. If you want to be." She turned halfway away, twisting the finger on her glove hard, and tossed her head like a skittish mare.

"That's… that's actually quite sweet of you," he said. He also used the gentlest tone he could muster up, being mindful of that time she'd accidentally burned his right eyebrow off.

She shot a sidelong glance at him in the shadows. "So you'll do it?"

"Yes."

"You'll be my brother?"

"Yes."

"And I can be your sister."

"Y-yes." He was starting to laugh at how flustered she was. She walked off at this and up the trail she rounded a tree. When he followed her, he found her sitting on a rock, fists under her chin.

"So if we're family now, can I talk to you about this man you're seeing? I don't know if I think he's quite good enough for my little sister."

She threw a stick at him. It went _ptaaang_ against his breastplate. "Shut up."


	13. Chapter 13

He shook over his lover's body for a moment, his hand still on the dagger. "The Crows will think that I am dead with him."

She crouched on the other side of Taliesen. "Then you are free, Zevran." Her eyes were bright, her whole face transformed by her smile. "Your life is your own."

* * *

He was seated on the edge of the bed and she lay upon her side, her head in his lap. He pierced her flesh with the needle and found that the earring did not slide quite so smoothly through. A single drop of blood painted a red line along the curve of her jaw and then across her throat. His hands did not tremble as he washed this away.

* * *

He saw dried blood along the front of her leg through the cell bars and it took him a long time to pick the lock to the door to free her. He was not thinking of the lock. He was thinking of the last time he saw blood on the inside her thigh, in the morning sun of their tent as they awoke among the Dalish elves, nearly two months before.

* * *

Zevran's eyes opened as the bed moved. He looked over his shoulder to find her casting off the blankets and standing in the darkness. "You are hungry, my Warden?" Two nights before she had been struck by a great desire for apples, raided the kitchen, ate three, and then gone back to bed without seeming to think any more of it.

She shook her head. "I need to see Alistair." She wrapped herself in a dressing-gown that the Arl's servants had given her. It was a fine thing, the color of dark cherries, but it was made for a human woman and trailed a foot behind her.

She stopped at the door and looked back, sleeves draping over her hands. He was putting his boots on. "You do not mind coming then?"

"I am quite interested in what you have to say to our handsome would-be king in the middle of the night in your nightclothes, as it would happen. You will find that I am a very curious man at times such as these." When he came to her, he touched her neck with fingers still warm from sleep. She ducked her head. He had learned that he could say the most lurid things to her, give her the most outrageous compliments, but this sort of thing would make her flush and turn away. His smile was white in the darkness as he dropped his hand.

* * *

Alistair opened his door in his shirt and breeches, his hair plastered on one side of his head and sticking straight up on the other. Neria smiled, her twisting nerves hidden behind her teeth. "Hello, my brother."

"Oh, that's not ominous at all," Alistair said crossly. She stepped forward until he moved back so she and Zev could step in. "You don't say a thing about that family business since before we saw the Dalish and then it's 'hello my brother' when you come into my room in the dead hours of the night after making me agree to marry a complete bitch and take a throne I've repeatedly told you I don't want.'" He shut the door behind them as she went to the hearth. Orange and red flickering lights brightened the room as fire burned from her hands.

"I'm sorry," she said. Zevran just lounged against the closed door in that boneless way he had and said nothing.

"You're sorry for what? For hardly talking to me for months? For waking me up? For threatening me with the crown? I know that you don't listen to me very much but I thought at least you would've heard me talk about the king business at _some_ point." She was seating herself on the couch before the fire and wrapping the tail of her robe around her knees. She felt sick and something about the smell of the fire and his voice together was making her stomach twist.

"I am sorry because I have made a mistake. Come and sit down." He moved toward her warily. She glanced at Zevran and found her lover caressing the hilt of his blade while watching Alistair. The couch shifted a little when Alistair sat down and her gaze went back to him.

"I should not have suggested that you marry Anora," she said, her voice low. "I will not force you to be trapped as a king if this is not the life you want. We will throw our support behind the Queen." Here she glanced at Zevran again, looking for something in his face. He raised a brow, half-straightening his tattoos.

She tucked her feet close to her and put one arm around her knees. "I have done my best and have never regretted where I have led us, but this time I made a mistake. I was wrong."

Alistair stared at her, then released a great lungful of air and leaned back, rubbing his face. "Oh, Maker, I'm a total ass," he groaned.

"You are," she agreed, but she said it so cheerfully and mischievously that he had to crack a smile. She unfolded her legs and stood, her gaze already going back to Zevran. "Back to bed, then. Hope you sleep easier now."

"Goodnight, Neria." She looked down when Alistair caught her sleeve. "And thank you," he said. "I really mean it. This means a lot to me." She put her hand on his wild hair and smiled before pulling away to go to the Antivan.

* * *

Zevran made love to her very gently that night, even when she demanded more. Just at the very edge of falling asleep, she felt him splay his hand across her waist and press his face to her hair.


	14. Chapter 14

Neria opened her hand and the two Tevinter mages died in billows of white smoke. Sten was moving on the third when an elf from the alienage ran to Neria. She turned to him, smiling through the glowing light of her magic, and he punched her in the face.

"No!" she said, taking a step back and dropping all of her magic shields. She looked like any elf now, save for being dressed preposterously. "You don't under—"

"I have two children sick!" He rammed into her and she fell down with a clatter of armor. He was readying a vicious kick to her ribs when he died with both of Zevran's knives crossing through his heart.

Neria stood while Zevran cleaned and sheathed his knives. He moved to her and gripped her arms, his eyes narrowed, mouth twisted. "Never hesitate for a pair of pointed ears!" he said and shook her a little. "If someone hits you, strike them down! "

She didn't answer, just looked at him steadily, and he dropped his hands as everyone stared.

"All of that power and you could be killed by any elf with an eating knife. This is foolish." He took a breath and stepped away. She reached out for his upper arm.

"No, you're right," she said, low. "It will not happen again."

Later when they walked into an alleyway Sten and Morrigan had their backs to the two for a brief moment. Zevran put his arm around Neria's neck and kissed her temple. "Forgive me, _amora,_" he whispered and they did not speak of it again.

* * *

Her voice rang clear in the Landsmeet hall, her fair eyes sometimes going up to meet those of one noble's or another, and for each she smiled as she spoke. They rallied behind her but Loghain still raged.

"Will you face me or will you name a champion?"

"Zevran will be my champion." So the whoreson from Antiva stepped forward, smirking at the irony of it, but mostly glad that he didn't have to see this large man's shield slam into Neria as she carried his child.

* * *

"No. Alistair is right," she told Riordan. Her gaze turned to meet Loghain's and her voice dropped as if to speak to him alone. "Because of your treachery we have had to fight for long slow years alone. So many have died and those who would have saved them lie as scattered bones on the field, remembered only by the two of us left."

"For our brothers," she said to Alistair.

"For Duncan," said he, and the Hero of River Dane was slain by Maric's son.

* * *

The first night outside of Denerim the air turned chill and Morrigan built up her fire. Water she set to boil and she watched with calm eyes as their leader turned from the rest to come to her.

"What comes, my friend?" she said, and she smiled at Neria, the sister of her heart, for the powerful mage would have indeed done as well as Flemeth's daughter as Morrigan herself.

They spoke of power and spells and fools and Neria never noticed that the leaves in her cup were different from those in Morrigan's. The witch smiled again, but her eyes held a different tale, and Neria did not notice that, either.

* * *

Morrigan watched by moonlight two figures by the riverside. Neria was rocking on her knees and Wynne had her arms around the younger mage. Occasionally blue light flared around them as another spell was cast.

Zevran stalked through the trees, keeping watch, and when he came near to Morrigan he drew his daggers. "Why are you not helping them?" If he were a wolf, his hackles would be raised.

She regarded him, calm yet with arms folded. "I would not interrupt. If I am needed, I will go."

* * *

Zevran and Neria curled around each other, seated by the river with blankets wrapped around them. "I'm sorry," she said to him, voice cracking, and he rubbed his fingers against her cheeks for she was crying. "I didn't know. I'm so sorry. I must have done something wrong."

"Shh, shh, shh," he said. He had his own eyes pinched tightly shut and his face against the side of her throat. "You could have done nothing, do not think this."

They swayed together as if buffeted by a strong, fitful wind, and sometime during the night he said this: "We can always have another."

* * *

When they walked the next day the others gave respectful space to Neria and Zevran, though Morrigan and Wynne still cast spells of healing upon her from a distance. At some point during the day the backs of their hands brushed and, like Chantry-raised teenagers, they linked their fingers together.

When afternoon came she began to haltingly speak. She told him about how she might one day be hunted, and about what happened to mages who bore children. He nodded and found that though it hurt a little, it was not so hard to seal away from his heart these thoughts he'd been having.

But then, in a very low voice, she said this: "So when the time comes, I would need to run and give them a reason not to look for me," and the walls on his heart fell down.


	15. Chapter 15

Neria Surana was alone in the hall outside of her room in Redcliffe Castle. She leaned against the wall and felt the cold of the stone through her palms. She felt the shifting of her armor around her body. She felt the Fade open to her, like a sweet stream of water over her wrist. She heard her own breath and felt the faint pulsing of her body with her heartbeat. She parted her lips, tasted wine from supper on her tongue, and felt her tongue cool as air moved over it.

Neria Surana stepped away from the wall and opened the door to her room.

* * *

Neria added more wood to the fire in the hearth until Zevran's room began to be uncomfortably warm. Flushed with heat she came to Zevran and knelt. She felt the line of the back of his thighs and stroked the swell of his calves as she pulled his smallclothes off of him. She pushed him to sit on the bed and her tongue slipped into the crease of his thigh while her hands moved over his waist, his ribs, the swell and dip of hard muscle. "You're beautiful," she said in a thick voice before she took him into her mouth. His hands slid through her hair and around the blunted points of her ears.

When she moved up his body she pushed his head to the side to taste his neck and collect the small beads of sweat gathering against his collarbone. They slipped against each other in the heat and she made a sound that was almost a sob.

She unbraided his hair as he suckled her breast, her back arching up to meet his mouth. When he looked up, his hair was wild around his face so she murmured, "You look like a barbarian," and he laughed as he entered her body.

He thrust slowly and watched her face. He ground against her and she sighed a little. He covered her body with his and put his mouth to her ear. "Think about tonight, not tomorrow." He moved his hips slowly. "I am here, my Warden. You are whole and lovely and I am beside you and within you. Feel this, Neria." He held her hips and tilted them up to stroke his hardness firmly along the soft melting heat of her. They shuddered together this time and he finally saw her lips part. Deliberately he ground against that spot again and again until she was squirming in the wet sheets. He leaned down and when she fell into her climax, he covered her lips with his and her cry rang in the roof of his mouth.

He put his hands into the backs of her knees and rode her harder then, faster as she kissed his face, his throat, and finally bit his shoulder. He muffled his own cry against her damp hair.

They slowly untangled themselves and she did not look at him. He fell asleep with an arm and a leg cast over her body, his head on her shoulder, her hand slowly moving through his hair.

* * *

The last two Grey Wardens of Ferelden were in an alleyway of Denerim surrounded by darkspawn corpses and shouting at the tops of their lungs at each other. She was screaming; he was roaring. Zevran watched with arms folded and one dagger out, patient. Morrigan watched with anything but patience and sometimes shouted at them both.

The tall not-templar and the small maleficar both stopped mid-word and looked to the south. The others fell behind as they moved and the argument was not taken up again as battle fell upon them.

* * *

The great dragon collapsed but still breathed. Footsteps pounded behind Zevran and he whirled to find Neria. She skidded to a stop between his blades. "Kill Morrigan," she said, then pulled his head down with her shield-arm and kissed his cheek. "Kill Morrigan." She kissed his temple, shaking, and then his brow. "Kill her." She looked him hard in the eye and he nodded. She broke away and ran toward the demon.

Zevran began to run as well. Morrigan was not looking at him; Morrigan was smiling through the blood on her face. Shining light started pouring over them all and he spared a glance that way to see a small, blinding figure struggling around a sword in the dragon's neck. He pounded with desperation toward Morrigan now and three steps away he saw her form shift to that of a bird's, wings beating. His white blade parted black feathers in the moment that a blast knocked him from his feet.

Zevran found Alistair kneeling beside Neria's body, gauntlets cast off, his hands on her face. "Well?" demanded Zevran, dropping to his knees on the other side.

"I.. I don't… Maker, _Neria_," Alistair said, voice cracking. Zevran stopped breathing and pushed Alistair's hands away from her. He bowed over her, whispered _amora_ against her bloodied skin, and only then felt the gentle brush of her breath on his lips. His eyes closed; two unshed tears then fell onto her face.

Alistair was the one carried Neria down to the ruined palace, but Zevran was the one who removed her armor and washed the filth from her body as she slept.


	16. Chapter 16

Neria awoke in a room filled with light and to find herself alone. She slid out of the bed and discovered that she was wearing a shift and that her body was achingly stiff. There was a washbasin in the room and she wobbled toward it to bathe her face. Her fingers informed her that her hair was clean; this was faintly disturbing news, as she did not remember cleaning it.

She opened the door and braced herself in the frame, standing there with legs skinny and naked beneath her shift. Outside there was a hallway that she did not recognize. It was clean. This was also disturbing because nowhere in Ferelden ought to be clean right after a Blight and she couldn't sense darkspawn for miles around.

Footsteps. An elf came up the hall carrying a bundle, but upon seeing the bare-legged wan Neria, she turned and darted back the way she came. Neria stared after her and then pushed away from the frame with a sigh to follow the woman.

She hadn't gone eight footsteps when Leliana turned a corner. "You're awake! We were all so worried about you!" Neria was bustled back into the light-filled room and took refuge cross-legged on the bed.

"Did anyone fall?" Neria asked as Leliana climbed up in the bed beside her.

"I cannot say for Morrigan, but everyone else is fine, my dear." Leliana was just radiant with joy and reached over to smooth the hair over Neria's ear. Neria held herself still and suffered through this touch with eyes turned away.

The door opened and in came a woman with a tray of food followed soon after by Zevran. Neria twisted in bed to face him better and Leliana laughed. "I think I'll go tell the others the good news," she said with a cheerful wink.

"So you are awake and it was not just a tale as I had feared," Zevran said when they are alone, bringing the food to the bed. Neria moved to lean against him. He was so solid and warm and breathing and alive and so she said in a low voice, "I am glad that you survived the battle, my friend."

"Likewise, my Warden." His arm went around her waist and he kissed her shoulder as she reached for the bread. They were both quiet for a moment after this.

Neria swallowed her mouthful. "Were you able to kill Morrigan?"

"Ah, going to start with the easy questions, are we?" He took a breath and lifted his head from her shoulder. "No. I am sorry, my friend, for I failed you in this. She turned to a bird and, though I did not see it, I believe that she flew away. May I ask what Morrigan did to deserve her death then? I have found myself curious on this point." So Neria began explaining about how an archdemon dies and about Morrigan's offer between bites of her breakfast, hand cupped beneath her mouth to catch crumbs.

"So our Chantry virgin's first experience in the intimate arts was with _Morrigan?_"

"Yes, I felt horrible. She is probably very selfish in bed. And also awkward. Besides," Neria added, feebly defensive, "We don't know that it was Alistair's first time."

Zevran just laughed and shook his head at that thought before falling silent. Neria pushed the tray away and leaned from him to reach for a water-cup on the nearby table. Zevran's question came in a soft voice behind her.

"So when you told me to kill Morrigan, you knew that if I succeeded, you would die."

Neria swallowed and set down the cup. "Yes." She straightened to lean against him again but he was stiff and pulled away.

"You ordered me to do something that would kill you."

Neria didn't answer him this time. Zevran stood and walked across the room. She watched him in silence as he changed into his leather armor and buckled his blades to his back. He counted out money from a purse and went to the door. There was one brief, hooded glance of his golden eyes before the door was shut and the assassin was gone.


	17. Chapter 17

Neria sprawled sideways across the bed that night and slept the fitful sleep of one who has already been sleeping too much. The sound of rain woke her up, and so did the sound of wind, and so did the lack of sounds when the rain stopped again. Her eyes closed over the memory of an old god scouring everything inside of her away as it passed to a dark place that she was beginning to recognize as the inside of Morrigan's womb.

The sky was a little less black outside when she crawled her way out of her bed. She found her ironwood armor but trembled as she lifted it. Dressed instead in her old leathers, she left the palace before dawn came.

* * *

It was afternoon when Zevran found her in the alienage. She was in the middle of an argument with a guard about whether or not she should be allowed to carry her sword. The stupid man didn't believe that she was the Warden until she used that spell that she said put her halfway in the Fade. The elves around her flinched at this but he only saw how her eyes closed and how her shoulders fell with weariness. He came close to her and offered his arm as she dropped the spell away; she smiled at him as one would smile at the first sight of home after a long journey.

Halfway back to the palace they stopped to rest in a quiet corner. She propped her head on his shoulder as he leaned against the wall and he indulged himself in laying kisses in her hair and along her ear, his mouth covering the earring there twice.

"You are not so very angry with me then?" He asked teasingly. "Truly I am amazed that the person to the left of me was not covered in fire the moment you saw me." Jokes about the fire spell always roused her to laugh and thump at whoever made them, but this time she just lifted her head and looked warily at him.

The moment stretched without her replying and her brow furrowed a bit when she looked away. "Angry with you?" she eventually said, her voice forced to be casual.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I am glad that you are not. And allow me to say that it was a perfectly miserable night that I spent, feeling like a fool in the cold."

"You expected me to be angry that you did not sleep with me? But you have done this many times before. Is this… an insult?" Now she was starting to sound testy and still wasn't looking at him. All of a sudden everything she ever told him about her life in the Tower came flooding back to him, especially the bit where she had never actually slept beside a man before him, and he wished he could kick himself repeatedly.

"No, I…. no." Zevran ran his hand over the back of her neck, ruffling the small hairs there.

"Why would this even be an insult? What does it matter where we sleep at night?" Neria looked up at him, brow lowered. "You get entirely too hot in the summer. Were it not for the trees in the Brecilian forest last summer, I would have made you sleep on the other end of camp every night."

He started grinning down at her cross expression. "I am not sure to tell you the truth. I am no expert in these matters either as I have said to you, my lovely Warden. I believe some think that perhaps their lover will not return?"

"Why would I even _think_ that?" she demanded next. "You _adore_ me."

At this he could only laugh heartily, dropping his head to her shoulder to hide his red face as his body shook with mirth. "Ob.. obviously I am a very confused man and foolish to guess at your thoughts," he managed to get out through his laughter.

"You are a man of excellent taste and reason," she said, with a kiss to the point of his ear. "And I missed you," she added with an air of magnanimous forgiveness. His arms tightened around her and he lifted her off her feet briefly. After this they walked back to the palace and it was a fortunate thing that nobody looked sideways at her along the way, for in his current state of mind he would have likely killed them for doing so.


	18. Chapter 18

She'd insisted on sparring today, but outside of the city because she meant sparring in the mage-templar sense. It was a marvelous day, ice-cold of course, but with the sun shining brightly on their field. He shouted instructions to her on how she handled her shield while she shouted, well, every insult she couldn't use against real templars, along with a lot of new swear words.

Zevran was a horrible influence on her.

Neria ran across the field quicker than him and, heaving fast breaths, had managed to cast one of her big spells with the last of the mana he hadn't yet drained from her. The tempest of lightning swirled all around him which, ow, metal suit here, _ow_, but it was the last of the mana so he was about to _win_ and she was going to hear about it for _weeks._ He dispelled the storm when a column of light descended from the sky and struck her down violently.

He ran to her and stood over her as she stirred weakly on the ground. "Oh, Alistair, _cheat_, royal bastard," she groaned.

"It wasn't me," he said, "And if you use that royal bastard crack in front of Anora I'm heaving you out the window. Oh, Andraste's sword! Get up!" And he rammed his shield into the templar that had come up behind him, throwing him off of what would have been a death-blow to Neria's neck.

"What means this, brother?" demanded the templar, his voice echoing through his helmet, but two more were approaching and Alistair backed up until he bumped Neria behind him.

"She's the Warden-Commander of Ferelden!" Alistair shouted, swinging his shield-arm wide against their flanking. "Get off!"

"But she was attacking a templar! You can't just let apostate mages—"

The templar to the right was removing his helm and laughing. "He's not a templar." He looked familiar, which gave Alistair a sinking feeling. "You're a Grey Warden too, aren't you?" Neria stepped out from behind Alistair; he felt how she was still completely drained of mana and he tensed further.

"I'd beaten him at a tournament when he was recruited by them." Ser Kalvin, that was his name. Alistair remembered the shouting of the crowd and how his heart had plummeted as he was bested yet again; knowing then that the Warden would never take him and he would indeed be sworn to the Chantry his whole life. "I've beaten him many times, to tell you the truth," said Ser Kalvin off-handedly. "He's very slow in battle. He wouldn't have made a very good templar. It's a good thing the Wardens made use of him."

"He'd have made a better templar than you," said Neria from his right with heat in her voice. "I'd wager ten gold sovereigns that he could best you. He's a _much_ better warrior than you are." He struggled against grinning all at once and wished irrationally that she'd been with him the whole way, from the stables at Redcliffe through the templar barracks.

Ser Kalvin laughed and shook his head with a smile. "You don't understand. I've faced him a great many times and always won."

Neria sheathed her sword and was counting out money as he spoke. She held out her hand when he was done with gold shining on the palm of her glove. "There you go, ten sovereigns. Just best him one more time and they're yours for the spending."

"Wagers…" said one of the helmed templars, but Kalvin waved him off. "No, I don't see the harm in showing the difference between an initiate and a sworn templar to this mage here." He set his helm back on his head and walked to the center of the field. Alistair followed slowly after, frowning now just a little at the memory of Ser Kalvin's quick blade.

* * *

Ten minutes later Alistair's sword was at Kalvin's neck and his knee on the man's breastplate. He helped him up after he yielded; it turned out that Kalvin only carried four gold and had to borrow the rest from his annoyed companions.

"Wiping that smug grin off his face and seeing a templar get beaten so quickly? Best day of my life," said Neria as they walked home.

"Plus we made ten gold off of them!" Alistair was still grinning like a great fool, turning his face up to the pale sun.

"What do you mean, _we?_ I didn't see you making any wagers!"

"You put me up like a pet rooster in a cockfight without even asking me! Part of that's mine."

"Ha ha, cockfight," said the Hero of Ferelden, and then she gave him twelve sovereigns.


	19. Chapter 19

Five dead bodies had lain on the floor just a moment ago and a stripe of sprayed blood still ran across the foot of their bed. Zevran leaned with hands upon the counterpane, looking at Neria in silence, both of them nude save bandages. It was then that he spoke the words that he had expected to say since the day he first ventured inside of her tent: "I must leave you."

She pulled him to her and they made love that night with blood at their feet and with more blood spilled in their bed before morning came, for they could not bring themselves to be mindful of their wounds.

* * *

Zevran whispered to her constantly during the next two days, about watching for shadows on rooftops and how to check for poison and how to listen to what people do not say. His brow would furrow and his head often shake as he muttered. In the night when they could not sleep he said, "I will try to keep their eyes away from you. You will know that I have failed in what I am attempting if they come for you. Be especially wary if this happens."

* * *

On the third day she walked with him toward the docks but they stopped halfway, for he did not want her to be seen giving him a farewell. He pressed her against a wall near the Pearl and they kissed deeply without any of their usual coy and teasing powerplay. He started to pull away and she tried to untangle her hands from the straps of his armor when he made a rough sound and pushed back to her. Nimble elven fingers slipped their way into her clothes, and under his clothes, and when they both recovered from the shuddering, he said against her bitten neck, "I will look to see if the Chantry of Antiva would overlook your presence easier than here."

She kissed his mouth again and said nothing. He lifted his chin to kiss her brow hard, his eyes pinched shut, and he rested the gem of her earring on the pad of his finger. He pulled away with grace and walked off without looking at her again.

* * *

On the road to Amaranthine Mhairi found that the Warden-Commander was a quiet and dignified woman who was disinclined to speak. Still, the silence was a bit much so on the second day she tried to draw her into conversation.

"Will the other Warden of Ferelden be joining us soon?"

"I gave leave for Alistair to go to Highever to honor the last Commander. I expect him in a few weeks," she answered while jerking on a rope on her pack.

"Ah. He will be the second in command then?"

There was a long pause before the Commander answered. "Possibly. Alistair has been my shield-arm. My second watches my back, but he is gone and I am not sure that he will ever return. Yes, Alistair will likely be my second now."

Mhairi experienced a rush of gratitude for the woman who had done so much for them all and was continuing to do so without her companions, so she said, "I will endeavor to be your shield until he returns, my lady."

Neria looked at Mhairi for the first time and gave a ghost of a smile. "And I will look after both of our backs."


	20. Chapter 20

Anders threw a sly look aside to Nathaniel after their first battle together was done. "Impressive, isn't she?"

Nathaniel made a noncommittal noise in his throat. Anders didn't let that stop him. "She was my apprentice, you know."

"For three weeks!" tossed back the Commander over her shoulder.

"Taught her everything she knows, too," he continued to Nathaniel, who was trying to ignore him.

Neria turned around and walked backwards. "Yes, you did," she called him in a taunting way, "but you'll be surprised how little that trick with the tongue came up during the final battle."

Nathaniel looked off to the side of the road but it just made Anders laugh harder when he saw that the dour man's ears were turning colors.

* * *

Neria closed her eyes and smelled the air outside the walls of Amaranthine. She opened them and she tipped her head back to look up the far distance to Anders. "It was the light that made me feel like that, at first. It's so different out here! The way it moves over your skin as you walk. And it burns the skin! I'd never guessed!"

Anders's smile faded a little. "How old were you when you were taken to the Tower?"

"I don't know. I was too young to tell them. But I was in there for eighteen years."

Anders reached over to ruffle her hair but she stepped away before he could touch her. "Come on," she said to everyone. "Let's find out what we're meant to fix here."

* * *

The last man living was tossed in the air by Oghren's blow and died before he hit the ground. Neria walked among the corpses, magic trailing her in wisps. She knelt beside a man with an axe-blow splitting his leather armor. She pulled the armor open.

"Anders," she said urgently. "I need you to heal this man."

Anders moved toward her and looked down. "He's dead. I can't heal the dead, Commander."

She looked around at the rest of the fallen, her movements quick. "Heal one of them. Any of them. Just heal one." She went to a different corpse and began unbuckling his armor. She pulled it open awkwardly around Nathaniel's arrow and Anders could see that tattoos covered his chest where the blood did not.

"They're all dead. I'm… sorry. We are very deadly people."

She sat back on her heels and looked at the body for a moment. She hissed a word he didn't catch and slapped the corpse across the face, which made Anders step back. With a quiet thoroughness she searched all of the bodies and then stood. They filed behind her as she walked down the road without looking at them.

They had not gone a quarter mile when she started to weave as she walked. She went to the side of the road and sat heavily on a root. "Maker's _balls_," she said in a strangled voice, turning her face from them. "Og, I need a drink." He could hear in her voice that she was about to cry. She tipped her head from side to side, took off her gauntlets and threw her helm into the grass on the other side of the road.

"Er, I don't exactly have my fancy stuff on me, Commander," said Oghren.

She was still tipping her head as if fighting against some head injury and the heel of her hand she ground into the spot between her brows. "_Now, Oghren!_"

Nathaniel and Anders exchanged glances. "I'm going to go keep watch," said the Howe in an undertone, before slipping off.

Oghren gingerly offered a bottle to Neria. She took a long swallow and then gagged. He reached for it and she snatched it out of his grasp. "This is about that swishy elf, isn't it?" he asked.

"_Yes_, this is about that swishy elf!" she said roughly and took another drink. She covered her eyes with her free hand and began to sob. Her whole body shook with it.

Oghren looked at Anders. Anders raised his brow and jerked his head toward Neria in a way that he hoped said, _you've known her longer than I have!_ The dwarf took a deep breath.

"Trust me, it's better this way, Commander. Those kinds of things are bad news for people like us. Next thing you know, you end up with a sodding sprog on the way and you won't know what the hell to do with it."

Neria's rough voice became venemous. "You were with us on the road to Redcliffe, you _sodding arse."_

Oghren threw his hands up and raised his voice. "I wasn't asking after your girly regions on the march! Nughumper. I'm going to go find something to hit." And then he walked up the road, leaving just Anders, if one was counting, which Anders certainly was.

He sighed and moved to sit down beside her as she wept, wearing his discomfort like a constricting but fashionable tunic. Just as she was starting to hiccup, he said, "So, some elf then?"

Her voice was broken. "I loved him _so much._"

When she finally quieted down to just shuddering breaths he looked sideways at her red and wet face and said, cautiously jesting, "So, rebound sex, right here if you need it." She punched him hard on the shoulder then rested her head on the same shoulder and took another drink.

"I'm just saying!"

* * *

_To the Grey Warden Alistair, lately of Highever,_

_It is needful that you leave the memorial for honored Duncan and come to Vigil's Keep in Amaranthine immediately. Grim news has befallen and your experience is wanted. If you have found anyone that you believe to be a good recruit, bring that person, but come at once._

_Be wary of the darkspawn. They are more intelligent than they once were and have taken Wardens hostage to drain them of their blood. Travel in company._

_I am fearful for your safety, Brother, and would be more certain of our endeavors here if you were with me. Please make haste._

_Neria Surana, Warden-Commander_


	21. Chapter 21

1.

The muffled sound of angry female voices rose higher through the Keep. Suddenly the shouts were clear, ringing through an open door. The door slammed shut in the stone walls: Velanna and the Commander were done arguing for the night.

2.

Felsi and Oghren both turned to Neria. Their shouts died away and in the background someone plucked a lute. She opened her hands and backed away from the dwarves, eyes wide, head shaking as if trying to move through a dream.

3.

She was crying, _it hurts, it hurts, it hurts_ and he was crying over this_ I know, I know, I'm hurrying_ as he propelled her into her room. He rummaged through her things until he found a bottle of blue and swallowed it back. He pushed her on the bed and pulled the bones of her arm. She screamed in pain and then arched in pleasure as the pain was abruptly taken away by his magic. Eyes still shut, she put fists in his hair and drew him down into the bed.

4.

He was so big, so slow. She had to pull him down to kiss him, couldn't get her arms around him properly, and the rough hair on his chest, which she had once loved to run her hands through, now felt like an intrusion on his skin. His large fingers were pleasant, if slow, and though she found pleasure there she felt split open when he entered her.

After he left she wept into her soiled bedding and felt over her skin the ghost of smaller hands, strong and nimble as they lifted her, the ghost of a chest that fit well over her back, silky hair tracing her shoulder and full lips at her ear breathing _amora_ into a night that held nothing but silence.

5.

_To the Grey Warden Alistair, lately of Highever,_

_I well realize that you have not received my previous letters, so allow me to reiterate that you must make for Vigil's Keep and Amaranthine at once. It is unlikely that I will survive and I wish for you to command the Wardens that remain. We both know what your thoughts would be on this issue and so I beg that you forgive me for asking this of you._

_Know that I do not share your doubts. Your abilities exceed those of mine and even Duncan's, for while we were both suited to leading the order in times of war, you are the one who will be equally gifted in times of peace._

_I pray that this finds you in good health. If I do not see you again, I would have you know that I have always held you in the highest esteem and affection._

_Warden Neria_

6.

The Commander's helm was at her hip as she spoke with the Seneschal. The conversation was abruptly broken at the moment when soldiers arrived through the splinters of the gate. She began running toward them, scrambling over a broken wall on the way, and the blonde man at the front of the newcomers turned.

She flung herself at him with a clash of armor, holding herself off the ground by her arms around his neck. She pushed her face into the side of his throat, shaking, and he held her up and close against him by his arms wrapped around her. His eyes were wide in his reddening face, but after a moment he closed them and bowed his head against her, murmuring something, and all Anders could think was, _I thought it was an elf that she loved._


	22. Chapter 22

_**AN:**__ Thank you all for the wonderful reviews! I get so excited when I see one!_

_I've edited this chapter over and over and over so I hope it makes sense to you, because it sure doesn't for me anymore! Way to be a problem child, Chapter 22._

* * *

Vigil's Keep looked _terrible _when Alistair arrived. The walls still stood for the most part, but some were caved in and anything not made of stone was destroyed. He tried to look at the mess from a commander's point of view, whatever that meant, and the back of his neck became painfully tight.

They climbed some stairs and he turned at some quick movement to his left to suddenly have Neria leaping at him. He caught her reflexively and held her up. She was snuffling against his neck, her warm breath going under his armor.

"Where were you? Where were you?" she was asking, her voice shaking.

He bowed his head against hers after a moment's hesitation. "I couldn't come," he said. He allowed his gauntleted hand to cover her hair. "The darkspawn were awful in western Amaranthine and the Teryn asked me to help protect the people when it spilled over to Highever."

She was sliding down now and so he opened his arms to let her go, looking worriedly at her face. "I couldn't say no. I'm so sorry."

She took a slow breath and nodded. Her face was red but she didn't look like she was crying, which was good, because he'd never seen her cry unless badly wounded and he had no idea what the proper response to crying from your commander/sister/first-love-that-rejected-you-for-a-manwhore.

"You did well," she said with a firm and polite smile. She looked intent and cheerful again as she always did. She nodded to the side. "Come on. If you're not tired, we've work to do."

* * *

That night she asked Alistair to come to her room, where the roof had already been restored but the door was just a bit of tacked-up cloth. There were pieces of shattered furniture in the corners and a straw mattress on the floor. They crouched before the hearth and talked for hours as the fire burned to embers, until their hands became black shapes against the dull red. He spoke of how he had led soldiers for the first time and how awful that was. She did not speak clearly about anything, but he managed to learn that she felt responsible for a lot of people dying in Amaranthine and that Zevran was gone, though he couldn't work out why.

When he finally yawned and stood to go to bed she said suddenly, "You can sleep here," and he would've been less shocked, frankly, if she'd punched him.

"I… what?" he said, his stomach tumbling over as he looked down. Her hair was like shining hills and valleys of fire and he had never touched it with his bare hands more than twice in his life.

"Ignore that. Never mind. You won't disappear overnight if I don't watch you," she said with an odd laugh. "I showed you where the Warden men were sleeping?"

He nodded and left a moment later, the knots in his stomach tying up and loosening again and again.

* * *

Neria shut the door which had only been installed a week ago. "So. This is a commander meeting."

Anders shot a look at Alistair's back as the other man made his way toward the bench in the room. "We're commanders?"

"Ha! If we're commanders then that explains the sorry state of this Keep, doesn't it?" said Alistair. Neria moved to a short block of stone that still hadn't been cleared away after all these months and sat down.

"Yes, well. Congratulations! You're being promoted!" she said. Alistair made a face at her and she gave him a thread of a smile that disappeared quickly. "Not you. Him." Her finger was pointing directly at Anders.

"What?" Anders sat down in the room's one chair. "I mean, I can't fault your good judgment, but… what? I didn't think we had a hierarchy other than you on top and everyone else directly beneath you." He couldn't help himself. He smirked a little.

Neria stood up with a sigh and rubbed her hands together. She paced across the room. "I'm—" she released a breath and looked at the ceiling as if suddenly trying to find faith in the Maker. "—making you the Warden-Commander."

Alistair let out a guffaw and pointed at Anders, who ignored the other man and sprung to his feet. "_What?_ You can't! I'm a _mage!"_

Neria spun on her heel to face Anders with her arms spread wide in the universal gesture of_ What a coincidence! I may know something about magic myself!_

"You're the sodding hero of Ferelden! It's different!" said Anders. "Also I won't do it!"

"Wait wait wait…" Alistair's brow furrowed. "Why do we need a new Commander? Where are you going?" he asked, while Anders held his tongue and vividly imagined the hell of being trapped by responsibility.

"To Antiva." She sat down beside Alistair and rubbed her forehead. Her fingers were stiff and jerky in every motion. He looked over at her, elbows on his knees.

"Why…?" he drawled, warning in his tone as if he already knew the answer. She shifted in her seat and just looked at Alistair with lips pressed and her eyebrows raised meaningfully.

Anders looked between the two. "Why are you going then? You're going to have to use words on me, I'm afraid."

Alistair answered for Neria while still studying her face. "She's going to bloody well find a single assassin in all of Antiva and drag him here by the points of his ears!" Neria jumped to her feet and put her palms out toward him, turning away and saying nothing as she always did when the subject of the missing elf came up. Anders had had to resort to asking Oghren questions about Zevran, which was always a smelly experience and rarely worth it.

"Neria, if he left you, you can't go putting your life in danger just to bring him back!"

"He didn't leave me!" she burst out in a shout at Alistair. Anders was struck all at once by a distant memory of his mother shouting at his uncle. He dropped back in his chair and laced his fingers together, smirking again. "If he's not back he's dead or in trouble, and from what he'd told me, he's likely dead!"

"Then why go?" Alistair shouted back and he opened his arms.

"Who else will go after him if I won't? They can't _do_ this to him without me hurting them in return! No, you know what?" she swept her hands back and forth, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter. I'm leaving. You lot can either talk to me about it or I'm sneaking out during the night."

Alistair was making a strangled sound and so Anders had to raise his voice over him. "I'm no more keen than he is on you doing something like this, but why me? Why not Alistair here, or—ooh, what about Nathaniel? He's _good_ at these kinds of things!"

"Alistair can't be the leader of a whole Arling. Anora would have him poisoned," which was confusing information to Anders. Neria was watching Alistair. "And to make a Howe into the Arl would invite unrest. You'll be good at it, Anders… Alistair," she sighed, and moved toward the templar. "I'll come back if I live?" she offered.

"That's _not a comfort!_" he spat. "You've never even travelled alone! Do you know what they _do_ to elf women who travel alone?"

Neria stepped back and rubbed her forehead yet again as the two men glared at her. She dropped her hand and looked at them. "You both owe me," she started. "Anders, you know you'd have hanged and I gave you freedom from the Tower. And Alistair, are you sitting on a throne in Denerim like everyone in all of Thedas wanted of you?"

Alistair shook his head, still frowning. "Wait, what?" said Anders. "Throne, what?" He gaped at his fellow Warden. They both ignored him.

"Bloody Anora offered me a boon for almost dying with the Archdemon and where did that end up? Which is another reason why I want a skilled mage as the Commander, to tell you the truth. Please." She retreated back to the stone in the corner and sat down, rubbing her face. "I want this one thing. I went to the Tower when I was a toddler and I've been fighting the Blight ever since I got out. I'm not a _slave. _All I have is my own life and I want to decide what to do with it. And if I live, I'll come back." She glanced at them from under her hand.

"Let me go with you," Alistair said first, then stopped and looked away, frustrated as Neria shook her head.

After a tense silence, Anders spoke. "Fine, I'll do it. I'd do worse than this to get my own room and office anyway. I'll roll all over in your sheets while you're gone and think, mmm, Neria!" Alistair shot him a glare and Neria smiled briefly.

"Alistair.." she stood and walked to the ex-templar. Neria stepped up on the bench beside him, took his head in her hands, and leaned over to kiss his forehead. Anders pitied the man and looked away.

"If I live, I will return," she said a third time as she jumped down. "But it might be better to let the news of my death out sooner rather than later in order to secure Anders's authority in the Arling. Please don't spread information about where I'm going or why. It would be best if everyone just thought of me as dead. I don't want to get hunted down by the Chantry. I could get killed."

"I won't," said Anders, and a moment later Alistair nodded, too.

"Thank you." Neria studied Alistair for another breath or two, then sighed and went to the door. She left and Anders followed, still arguing, leaving Alistair there with his eyes closed and his hands in fists.

* * *

Alistair came to her room and paced between the bed and the fire in the hearth as she watched him from the shadows along the wall.

"You're my best friend and you will get hurt," he said without preamble. "I don't even think you understand this."

"I'm not without skill, even if you don't consider my magic," she answered. "You've taught me how to use my shield well, yes? And I learned quite a lot about my blade from Zev."

He stopped and looked the shadowy shape of her and opened his hands. "Yes, but you're not a warrior! I can best you half of the time!"

"And I can best you half of the time!" Neria gave a brittle laugh and took a step into the ruddy light. "Do you not know what this says about me? You are a better warrior than the Hero of River Dane was! You're one of the best in all of Ferelden, do you not know this? You're probably better than King Maric ever was!" and her voice hitched briefly over his father's name, losing momentum there. "What chance does a bandit have against me if I can beat _you_ half of the time?"

As he took three steps toward Neria he saw how her eyes became wild and looked away, but he put his arms around her anyway and her arms did not hesitate to close around his waist. "How will I _do_ this without you?" he blurted. She was so small. She hadn't even seemed this small when he carried her off of Fort Drakon. She was moving her head against his chest, directly over his heart at her height, and he would have to lean over a little to even be able to kiss her hair, which he _mustn't do, mustn't do_, but then he leaned over and did it anyway. Her hair surrounded his nose and mouth; she smelled of fire and clean water and though he'd told himself for well over a year now that he cared for her as no more than a sister it was a _lie._

"I swear you are stronger than you think. And if I live, I will come back," she said, as if this didn't make pieces of him break all around her. His hand shifted up and moved through the hair at her crown, his smallest finger nearly touching the skin of her neck and she _shivered_. Horrible, painful, traitorous hope leapt within him. She made a small sound that he didn't know the meaning of and in his mind there was a flash of Neria arching above him as Morrigan had once done but in the same moment as his blood was rushing all around him she was squirming away from him, out of his touch and back into the shadows where he couldn't read her.

"I have tried my best to give you the life that you told me you wanted," she said there and she sounded as if she was begging. "_Please_ be happy. Trust me to look after myself. Please don't come for me."

He took a deep, aching breath and found that he could speak. "Come back, then. Live, and come back." He could not find a smile for her or any more words and so he left to find that it hurt even worse outside of her room than in it.


	23. Chapter 23

The walls and the street were both made of honey-colored stone and the sun soaked into Zevran's armor with an even heat. Some distance ahead of him a man in fine silks turned the corner, each step rolling into the next. Behind him there was the soft whisper of a boot pressed carefully across gritty stone.

_Their steps crisply broke through yellowing grass as they rounded a hill. Neria lifted her hand for a halt and looked toward the distant houses with narrowed eyes. "I see two, no. I think three of them are nobility. There are six others dressed in leather armor. We should have little trouble. Lead us in, Oghren. Make for the bann in the grey armor first."_

_She lifted her staff to the clean-swept sky and pulled down magic on it, two white chips of bone swaying from the end._

Zevran turned the corner and found the man waiting for him, smiling. An inch of a shadow trembled to Zevran's left. "Arainai! Such an pleasure to see you. Your own Master would be envious to hear that you've seen me before him, wouldn't he?" He was dark-haired, dark-skinned and his eyes were black.

"To be perfectly honest I was hoping that he would not be hearing straight away," Zevran said, his full lips molding to a relaxed smile. He folded his arms and lifted a shoulder. In a doorway ahead of him and to the right there was the creak of leather. They were not bothering to hide themselves well. "Why should I go to him when I could work for a stronger Master such as yourself?"

Master Fedele laughed, his voice deeper than Zevran's own. "I am not in the habit of taking in dead men. For you died nearly two years ago, did you not?" His smile widened until the corners of his eyes creased. "But still, it is an honor to me to be the one to ensure that you have a proper Crow burial." The shadow to Zevran's left flashed again. He threw himself against the wall and the arrow shattered in the street.

_Beside the pink bone and the great emptiness of the man's split chest, Neria saw the edge of a tattoo. She went to another man and pulled open buckles. Nathaniel's arrow trapped the armor against the body, but she was able to slide it along and bend the ribs enough to see the tattoo—a whorl there followed the muscle and she had traced just such a whorl so many times with teeth and tongue._

"_I can't heal the dead, Commander."_

_The body didn't even bleed anymore as she rocked the torso by the shaft piercing it. "Shit," she hissed, and hit the corpse across the face for being so weak as to die without giving her news._

He had counted five, but he was so, so wrong, so mistaken. Knives serrated through his skin to tear the fibers of his muscle, sliced him again and again and the shaft of an arrow lodged itself solidly in his body in such a sudden blow that it should have made more sound than it did. His breathing and the gritty sound of his boots turning against stone became the only sounds he knew and the last one he killed with his left dagger for his right arm did not work anymore. There were nine bodies, no, eleven, no… his eyes failed him and it looked like the streets of Antiva were underwater.

His feet did not carry him with any of his usual grace as he departed. He turned from voices and movement and found himself on his one good hand and his knees without remembering falling. His tongue grew thick in his mouth. He moved toward darkness and fell into dreams.

_She stumbled in the road, her legs grown weak and she half-fell to a seat on a root. She pushed the heel of her hand between her eyes as Zevran filled up everything under her skin. The scent of him was in her shoulders, his voice in her throat, the taste of him in her belly and the secret way that she watched him move was in her lungs. She could not breathe._

Zevran dreamed of many things as he bled. Sometimes he would dream of running across rooftops a moment before they fell away, sometimes he would dream of Rinna and her flashing eyes, but more often his poisoned mind carried him to that which had been recently familiar, campfires and the cold of Ferelden. He dreamed that Neria did not breathe after the dragon and tears seeped from beneath his eyes as his lips moved soundlessly. He dreamed that his Neria slept beside him and his fingers moved through the grit of the stone and his own sticky blood, tracing patterns on what the Fade told him was the smooth valley of her back. His heart felt whole beside her as he lay there dying.

_Neria wept for Zevran, rocking back and forth. The warmth of the liquor spread through her belly and left a foul taste on her tongue. She curled her body around the memory of her Crow where he was lodged beneath her breastbone._

_She named it for the first time. "I loved him _so much,"_ she cried, her throat opening easily for these words._

Zevran's golden eyes opened. He was glued to the street by the remnants of his blood and dried filthy water. Eventually he was able to bring a small vial to his lips and swallow. The strong herbal flavor of it was good against his parched throat. He was in a dark place with a small arch of stone above him. He rolled to his belly and accepted the pain that followed without sound. After a time he lifted to his knees and crawled out. He drank the contents of another vial and was able to stand against the wall, shaking like a weakling. The mistakes he had made against Master Fedele were enough to kill him, but he did not yet have it in him to die as he ought.


	24. Chapter 24

"…did you not, Master Arainai?"

Zevran shifted his eyes from the man he was speaking with and looked to his guest further up the table. "Mmm? Forgive me, my exquisite lady, for I was not following your conversation." This woman was rumored to be in the pocket of the Grandmaster of the Crows and he smiled at her.

"I was asking if you knew the Grey Warden that is called the Hero of Ferelden." He caught the slight hitch of movement as one of his household served a plate for the lady.

"Ah, yes, I have met her. Why, have you met her as well? I did not think that of your refined tastes would be very keen on a nation that smells of wet dogs and garbage. Maker knows that I was not."

"I heard the news today that the barbarian nation mourns her death and thought of you." Her smile widened; it made the woman look like a refined cat with a mouse-tail dangling from her mouth.

Zevran sighed smoothly. "Such a pity. Rarely have I met a woman more eager to come to bed, though I must tell you that it was the other Warden who was more skilled." He winked at the woman. "But if you would join me later for a more… private conversation? I will tell you all that you wish to know."

She declined, as expected, and he returned his attention to the man beside him, the fork and knife in his hand smooth as he cut into his supper.

* * *

Zevran sat on the edge of his bed and leaned his forearms against his knees. He opened his hands and they curved around the space where Neria's face would have fit. He could see her: her mouth open with laughter, her eyes fascinated as she had once looked up at him. He felt as if some vital part of his body had been cut away and he could still feel the ache of what was missing in the shape of her. She was a woman of angles, his Neria, snapped words and eyes flashing with temper and he had been half of a person since he left her over a year ago.

His hands shook where they cupped the air and then closed to fists. He found a bottle of wine in his cupboard and drank straight from mouth of it. The strings he had pulled carefully for months were to close around the throat of the Grandmaster three days hence, but he would release them now. He slid to the floor and buried his face in his hands like a child.

* * *

Neria sat cross-legged in the floor with the heavy and loathed grimoire in her lap. She read it aloud in practiced whispers, faster and faster, then drew her finger across the floor. Faint light sprang up in the wake of her touch on the wood like a curtain of water rising to the ceiling.

* * *

"You are being hunted, Master."

"Yes? If you are able to tell me this, then why hasn't the person responsible already been killed?"

Taddeo lowered his eyes to the powerful elf beside him before answering. "This is where Gianni, Vanni, Leone, and more than ten others have gone to."

Master Arainai frowned just a little. "Master Conti?"

"I cannot say. Anyone who has spoken with this person is now dead. Vanni was able to discover that you were definitely her target, but I did not much learn more than that before Vanni died."

"What is this woman's name?"

"I cannot say this either, Master—" and he stopped briefly as Arainai gave a hiss of displeasure that sometimes ended in violence. This sort of behavior had become gradually more common in the last few months. Taddeo held himself still, then continued when it appeared that a glare was all that was forthcoming this time. "But Vanni thought her accent was that of Seheron or possibly Ferelden."

Master Arainai's glare flicked away. "What is the condition of the bodies, if anyone has seen them? Were there burns, or was it just knifework and poisons?"

"No, no signs of magic, if that is what you are after." Taddeo allowed himself a small smile.

"Cheeky bastard. You realize that without your devilish good looks and skills in the bedroom you would never get away with it."

Taddeo's smile grew to a grin. "I am ever at your service."

Arainai sighed. "If this person is so eager to find me, then let her, I say. Set Fosca on the task of inviting her here and once she is within our enclave, we will spring our trap, find out who she is working for, and kill her."


	25. Chapter 25

Taddeo caught up to Zevran in a corridor. "It appears that your guest has arrived."

"Ah, good," answered the Master. "Let us show her into the—" and then an enraged scream struck right at Zevran's spine before touching his thoughts and he was sprinting as fast as he could. Stone archways opened to his right to the terrace and he could see a crowd of his Crows moving like lithe wolves to a deer. He belted through an arch; he saw in a corner of the courtyard below a ring of perhaps ten assassins frozen solid around a small woman made of shining light. She was crouched low behind her shield with her sword out but he had thirty more Crows coming and he had told them to kill her. "Stop!" he shouted and climbed over the balcony railing, rolling as he fell. "_Stop!" _

She whipped her shield-hand out at his sudden movement and cast a spell. He was lifted off his feet and was being crushed painfully from every angle, unable to move, unable to speak, and watched as his Crows descended upon her.

* * *

"Stop!" Neria backed toward a corner of the courtyard, crouched low behind her shield. "Stop, stop stop!" She stumbled over the outflung arm of the woman that she had just killed and the Antivans around her started shaking frost off of their shoulders. A magebane flask shattered at her feet and she, one foot in the Fade, had to narrow her focus to keep it from pulling her all of the way in and spitting a demon out instead. "He said stop!" she repeated in her accented Antivan.

"Yes, and then look at what you did to him!" The speaker, a dark elf, darted quickly to move around her and she winged the edge of her shield at his belly. He stumbled back and she retreated until she was pressed against the stone wall.

"The spell will wear off in a few minutes!" A flash of movement to the side and she saw someone wiping purple along their blade. More magebane. It was all she'd smelled for months, it felt like. Stupid Crows.

"He did say he wished to find out who she works for. We can't kill her out of hand." This was from a tall and dark-haired human. He approached Neria warily, his knife tilted away. "If you do not wish to die, then you must allow me to bind you until this spell of yours wears off."

The glowing woman hesitated. The courtyard was filled with Crows and four bowmen were aiming at her from the balconies. She could kill quite a lot of them, though possibly not all of them. "Zevran, he is a… commander of yours?"

"He is, my lovely." Neria's sword wavered before slowly lowering. The last time that someone had asked her to surrender ended up with a lot of death and screaming and one delicious kick to Cauthrien's face before she was taken. Her shield slid from her arm. The human gathered up her hands and slipped behind her to tie them. She hunched her shoulders away from him. He tugged downward and she knelt as her wrists were tied to her ankles. They surrounded her, watching with dead eyes, their blades out.

The woman who had led her there, Fosca, slipped forward. Neria glared at her. Fosca crouched before the mage with a kindly and gentle expression, but then her hand was like a snake-strike, shoving something into Neria's mouth. Neria snapped her head back against the man's arm.

Neria gagged and spit. "Bitch!" Magebane tasted as awful as it smelled and just the feel of it on her tongue made her shake with weakness. Her glowing shields fell one after another.

Someone kicked Neria's side; she felt a rib crack as her world exploded into one of white pain. A scream was caught within her throat, moaning out through her nose and her gritted teeth. She took a breath, and then made a sob while letting it out. "You will regret that in twenty seconds when the spell on your commander wears off."

It was the dark elf who dragged her up by an arm and slapped her across her ear. "He will kill you after he speaks with you. Do you think you can kill so many Crows and live? You will beg for death, whore."

"Five seconds," was her gasped reply. He dropped her, which made her cry out again, and spat in her face as he stood.

"The Crows don't—" and he did not finish, for Zevran had laid open his throat as he stepped by. The elf's body crumpled to the ground in a handful of thuds.

"Look at you!" said Zevran. He crouched beside Neria and wiped the spittle from her face. "Lovelier even than when I remember. Fosca, go and fetch the healer, quickly, yes? And untie her, Taddeo. Where did you learn to speak Antivan from, my clever friend?" His hand slipped beneath her head to cushion it from the stone as Taddeo worked the ropes.

"_I thought you were dead,"_ she said in Fereldan, her voice just a little rough. Zevran was more golden than she remembered.

"_I thought this of you also. Well glad am I that we both were wrong."_

* * *

They stood apart in his sitting room, looking at each other sidelong, both of their faces giving away nothing. Their many months apart filled up the space between them with the silence of a snowfall. It was Neria who broke first, moving to set the curve of his cheek in the hollow of her hand. She kissed his jaw; he bowed his head against her throat.

"_Amora_," he said.

"_Mi amora_," she answered.

* * *

He was crouched over her in the bed and was amusing himself by fanning out her long hair. "Look at these freckles," he said, his hand now going to her chest. "You have tried to go brown as you have said, but look, the Fereldan in you is stubborn and pale and will not give ground. You hardly look like my Warden!"

Neria gave an exaggerated sigh and pulled him down beside her. "Zev. If you do not like my spots then this is a character flaw of yours that you must overcome."

"No, no, I think I see my Warden somewhere in here." He moved his hand over her white belly, through her soft hair, and slipped two fingers inside of her and crooked them a few times. She caught her breath and squirmed against him. "There she is!" and he gave a lascivious laugh.

"Terrible!" she gasped against his arm.

"I know," he said, slipping a leg between her thighs as her nails dug new furrows over his bottom. "Terrible lines that I use, and yet they always work on you. You should consider raising your standard."

She bit his arm sharply in reply and his hips jerked forward, thrusting his whole length in her at once, the passage already slick with his own seed from a few minutes ago. He pulled up on her waist to force her back into a harder arch and bit the underside of her right breast in retaliation. She spat out a filthy Antivan curse and clawed over his hips. He took her small breast into his mouth, smiling around it at the memory of his silent mage lover from years ago.

* * *

"So you have not given your own name to anyone?" Zevran asked this while lazily nipping Neria's wrist.

"No. I have tried not to give a name at all, but once or twice I told someone that I was Saraid."

"And a surname…" Neria looked at him sidelong, but he was just staring at the ceiling, his tongue teasing at her wrist without any real thought behind the touch. "Saraid Arainai." He glanced at her and briefly met her eye before shrugging. "It is up to you. It will make some hesitate to strike at you, but also some more eager to kill you. It… I would… It is your choice, my friend."

Neria was silent, measuring Zevran with her eyes. "It is a good name," she answered eventually. "I think I will take it."

Zevran sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. He made a small sound of distaste and shuddered. "Conversations like this always make me feel like someone is about to stick a knife in the back of our necks. Come, let us get ready for supper before we tempt fate further, yes?"

* * *

**_AN:_**_ Thank you again for every single comment and favorite! This is my first fic so I still get pretty wibbly every time I go to upload a chapter. Your encouragement has motivated me so much!_


	26. Chapter 26

Neria stood before the mirror, her hand moving over the braids in her hair which was done in an Antivan fashion. "How old are you, Zevran?" she asked abruptly.

Zevran looked up at her from the bed, where he was tugging on a boot. "I am twenty-nine years now, my Saraid." He grinned at the name. "Nearly thirty."

Neria studied her reflection and then looked critically over at the man who was now said to be her husband. "Do you suppose that I am near your age or very much younger?"

"Ah, this is right, you would not know. " Zevran stood, stomped his foot into his boot, and came to her, looking over her head at her reflection, much changed due to the many freckles. "I have often thought that you are much younger than me, when I have thought of it at all. You are, perhaps, twenty-two? Or twenty-three?" He tipped his head down to look directly at her face. "Just curious?"

Neria's chin was up in the proud way that she held herself when Circle-based ignorance appeared. She nodded, looking into the mirror at the two of them, fair and fiery together.

* * *

"A wife, Master?" said Taddeo in an undertone the day after after the supper where Zevran had introduced Saraid as such.

"Oh indeed, my friend, and a delightful minx she is too," Zevran answered blandly. They were seated on a balcony drinking wine and, Taddeo didn't fail to notice, the Master had chosen a table where he could keep an eye on the rooms where Saraid was.

"Some say that this is a weakness that we cannot afford just now. Protecting a lady who is not trained as a Crow will consume our time and resources."

Zevran slanted his golden eyes toward Taddeo. "Some say?" he asked wryly.

Taddeo did not look at the Master, but watched the fountain in the courtyard below, sipping his wine. "I do not agree with them, of course."

"Of course." Zevran chuckled and Taddeo hid a frown, for this was not the violent and quicksilver Master of two days ago. "Truly I hope that many think that my wife is a weakness. Those who doubt her usually end up dead."

"Crows do not marry," his second in command and sometimes lover (although not for two days) said with a low firmness.

"Yes. It is an impossible thing, to have a Crow with a wife." Zevran's eyes were steady on the doors across the way. "It is also an impossible thing to kill three masters in eight months."

Taddeo sighed. Zevran continued on.

"When I left Antiva, I could not have done this, all that I have done since returning, my friend. I picked up many things in Ferelden besides a lifelong adversion to rain and dogs. Think on this."

* * *

"In terms of sheer numbers I believe that I have more Crows that are nominally loyal to me than to the Grandmaster." Zevran leaned back in the tub, his arms on the rim, with Neria (or Saraid, or Mistress Arainai) seated between his legs and facing him. She was running a cloth of warm water over his shoulders, rivulets ignoring his tattoos to run along the welts that her scratches left in their last bout in the bedroom.

"Truly, we are not safe until he is taken down. " Her cloth moved to his face and he squeezed his eyes shut, luxuriating in the freedom to close his eyes in company without calculating the risks. She washed his brow, his cheeks, and he spoke around the cloth, tilting his head for her hand. "He regards me rightly as a threat to his power. Here, turn around so that I might wash your hair."

She turned and slipped down, her eyes going up to his face with her fascinated gaze. Her longer hair swirled beneath the water along his thighs and belly and a smile crept up on his mouth. She straightened and when her ears were out of the water, he spoke again.

"It took me a long time to move against him and I should not have given up as I did." He rubbed soap into her darkly wet hair, massaging her scalp with strong fingers, smiling again for her sigh of pleasure. "We must move swifter this time, for your reputation will surely eventually follow you and the specifics of who you are and my… entanglements with you will be used against us."

"Why did you give up?" she asked. He took a cup and poured water over her head, grinning a little at how her hair streamed down over her face and thin shoulders. Another cupful of water had a tangle looping over the point of one ear.

His smile faded and he coaxed her back against his chest as she wiped water from her face. "You were dead, my Warden." He moved his lips along her shoulder and the crook of her neck, sipping water from her skin. "I am not an ambitious man, though these Crows here think otherwise. I… could not go back to you until he was dead."

Her head tipped back and their eyes met and for the space of three breaths they looked at each other thus, much unspoken and understood passing in that glance. She looked away first and he felt her belly go hollow beneath his hand as a breath shivered in.

"One or both of us will likely die," Zevran said. "It is best that we accept this. He is well-guarded and it is a nearly impossible thing that we are attempting."

Neria laughed. "Is this what you think? Ah, my friend." She grinned then, glancing back at his face. "We are entirely too awesome and lovely to die and so we will not. It is now your destiny to be either the Grandmaster of the Crows or to make them fear you so that they will leave us." He laughed ruefully and tightened his arms as she spoke. "By my side you would storm the Black City itself, and with you by my side I could conquer the Maker's own palace. The House of Crows is nothing to us."

He continued laughing, his legs closing about her as well. "I will not doubt it."


	27. Chapter 27

"Brasca!" spat the Master under his breath. "Cazzone!" He was stalking around the room like a great cat as the other three Crows watched. Piezo, an elf with beautiful pale eyes, was the only one who seemed relaxed, his leg thrown over the wooden arm of his chair. He took a slow breath. "There is always the well to consider."

"We've been over that one. No, no." Arainai snapped his fingers quickly. "No, we are being stupid." He stalked to the door and opened it. "You—yes," he said to someone in the hallway. "Go and fetch Mistress Arainai. Yes."

He shut the door again and Taddeo said under his breath, "Oh, this should be good," to which Fosca laughed silently. The Master resumed his circuit of the room, but when he passed Taddeo, he slapped the back of the man's head. Taddeo grinned just a little.

The door opened a few minutes later and Saraid came in. Taddeo had to admit that she was lovely enough, as all elves were, especially wearing that fine gown with her red hair falling from the crown of her head—an exotic color in Antiva. Still, he had seen many elves more beautiful than she. "Yes, Zev?" One eyebrow raised as she pressed the door closed behind her. "Oh, you are in a mood, aren't you?" she said, amused, with none of the deference that Taddeo imagined a wife ought to hold for a very deadly husband (not that he himself had spent much time around married couples unless he was about to kill one of them).

"My dear," said the Master, with a flourished bow toward his wife. He took up one of her hands and kissed the back of her fingers. She was smiling and Fosca rolled her eyes at Taddeo. "I have had a setback and would like to have your considerable expertise put to the problem." He seated himself at one end of a long couch, crossing an ankle over a knee. "I would like Master Conti dead. Tell me what to do."

Fosca rolled her eyes to the ceiling again and Saraid caught this. "Fosca," she said with a sweet smile. Her accent, though understandable enough, was gutteral, as if all of the words crowded in the back of her throat. She cut off sounds abruptly instead of allowing them to flow naturally from the tip of the tongue. "Taddeo. And forgive me…" she approached the elf in the chair.

"Piezo," he told her, capturing her hand and pressing his own kiss with it, a dangerous gambit in Taddeo's opinion, but Piezo was rewarded with a smile from Saraid and it did not appear to upset the Master at all.

Saraid retrieved her hand and looked measuringly down at her husband. After a few moments of this, he nodded quickly at her and opened his hand. A signal?

"May I drink the wine?" she asked him.

He nodded again and she went to pour herself a cup while continuing to speak. "What is his house like?"

"Much like this one, except the courtyard is smaller and the building is larger. He has more interior hallways than I have."

Saraid turned away from the sideboard and Taddeo found himself the subject of her gaze, which slid over him from head to toe. He made his eyes go hooded as from desire out of habit. "And your Crows, Zev, they all fight in the same style as you do?"

The Master waved his hand. "Ah, you know, more or less. Some are better with poisons, some with intrigue, some with the bow, many of us with the seduction, as you were very fortunate to discover." Here Saraid gave a delighted laugh. She moved to sit at the other corner of the same couch as him. "But yes, more or less."

Saraid's eyes went back to Taddeo. He held her gaze as she slipped out of her shoes and set her bare feet on the couch in a vulgar way. "This is a bad thing. It is no good for a frontal assault. You and I were meant to strike at the enemy while he looks at the fellow with the big sword. Perhaps we could train some of your larger men to fight like.. a dwarf or a templar?" She glanced back to catch Arainai's eye and nodded aside at Taddeo. "I can do it too, as you know, if we need me to."

The Master was shaking his head but it was Fosca who answered, standing against the wall with her arms folded. "We don't _do_ frontal assaults. We are _Crows._"

"I agree, my dear, if we had our old friends with us, we would make short work of Master Conti, but I do not need to tell you that we do not." Arainai was watching Saraid with calm eyes. She was looking down at her cup, turning it in her hands for a while before drinking. Fosca shifted impatiently.

"I could get this Conti away from his people," Saraid said quietly. Fosca looked at her with eyebrows raised and a smirk and Taddeo turned his head away to hide his face as his own eyes rolled. If this could be done by them, it would have already been done.

Piezo, however, smiled indulgently. "And how would you do that?"

Saraid was looking only at her husband, her finger trailing on the wet rim of her cup. "The spell that I would use on our larger enemies." She ducked her head a little, watching the Master intently. "But it has a rather… obvious casting, yes? I would need to be quite close to him to keep from getting caught."

Arainai sucked in a breath. "And he would just.. go with you, would he not? As if you were a trusted friend. How long are you able to keep that spell up?"

"Perhaps fifteen minutes." Saraid took three long swallows of wine, her eyes cast down. "I've gotten to practice it more than when I last used it on front of you."

"This would work, too." The other three Antivans switched their eyes to their Master. "Though it would put you in enormous personal danger. _Brasca!"_

* * *

**_AN:_**_ who else here is totally picturing Neria and Taddeo having hatesex? Just me then? *cough* Also, thanks to kismet for helping me out with language! I didn't use more this time, but who knows, it may crop up in the future!_


	28. Chapter 28

Neria slept and Zevran did not. He rolled to his side and looked at her, grey in the darkness. He tucked his arm and leg around her and pulled her close until her head was under his chin, her breath fanning across his collarbone. She shifted with a sigh and drew her own leg comfortably between his knees. He kissed her hair, kissed it again, and then rested his cheek against the top of her head.

* * *

Neria unhooked the earring and fed it into Zevran's hand. He held her head against his shoulder and stroked her back. _Mia dolce, mia bella, mia forte signora._ Her hands rested on his hips, her thumbs stroking against the skin of his belly.

The door opened and Piezo placed his hand in the small of Neria's back as they left. He glanced behind him and Zevran's gaze was like a dagger of cold iron.

* * *

His broad hand on her throat was not tight enough to mark her, but it was enough to bring panic to her placid brown eyes. The air against her skin felt cold and there was a thump of her elbow against the wall. He dropped her and went for the laces of his breeches as she scrambled back against the wall. Her heart stung against her ribcage; she pinched her eyes closed.

_Sunlight pierced bright shafts in the leaf-canopy and she had been deliberately teasing Zevran for three days, refusing him. The birch bark beneath her hands was smooth and her legs shook a little as his calloused fingers traced rough circles just below her waistband. Her back arched when his touch slowly moved to tease at the hair between her legs and he had bent his knees to fit his hips snugly against her bottom. His teeth gripped the side of her neck, worrying her skin gently. By the time that she had finally bent over –_

He thrust roughly into her, too large, too quick, and though she didn't rip open she still gave a squeal of pain, bucking against his filthy body. Her head hit the floor and his hand gripped her mouth. She breathed in over his fingers, feeling tears shivering at the corners of her eyes.

With both fists she deliberately closed her line to the Fade and imagined lightning burning his broad body, ice shattering in his bones.

* * *

Zevran's hands were tightly clasped and he was staring at his own white knuckles when Taddeo entered the room. He unlaced his hands at once and sat back as if relaxed. "Good evening, my friend."

Taddeo went to the fire and stirred it. "If you do not think that she can do this, then why did you let her go?"

Zevran gave a quick snort of laughter and looked toward the darkness in the window. "This doubt that you have is a weakness of yours, though I realize that it would not seem so to you."

"Yes?" Taddeo stood and moved toward the table. "I thought that perhaps you were doubting, not I."

Zevran's eyes are level on the reflection of the black window, watching Taddeo move through the room. "Then perhaps it is a weakness of mine, that comes to me when I am not with her."

* * *

Vimone Conti kissed the dark-haired elf roughly, biting into her lip until he tasted blood. She gave a whimper and snaked her legs around his waist. He pulled back, trying to think through the loud music and the flickering light of the lamps. He took her by the wrist and dragged her away, snarling at his men when they tried to stop him.

* * *

Zevran Arainai stepped into the moonlight and Conti pulled the dusky girl behind him. _Master Arainai is your friend and you will not hurt him._

"No!" Vimone whirled and backhanded the girl. "_Witch!_" She fell to the ground.

Knives were hooked together within Conti's ribcage when he died, and the last thing he heard was Zevran's voice hissing in his ear.

* * *

"Why do you do these things?" Zevran had Neria in his lap and she was shaking with tears wetting her face. He had locked them into a storeroom and the air smelled of dust and grain. "Why did I agree to it? Why did you come back if you thought I was dead? Why did you let them hurt you?"

Neria nudged her cheek against his and on her breath was ice, freezing his ear. Her lips followed and brushed away the frost, tracing the curve of his skin as she spoke, voice thick, "When you confess your sins to Andraste's priest, do you tell her of your love for a blood mage?" Her teeth closed gently over the point of his ear, skin softening from her warmth. His whole body shuddered and she gave a tiny sound of need.

He slipped his hands beneath the flimsy dress that Conti had seen fit to clothe her in and adjusted his own armor just a little as he stroked her. His voice was rough. "When you abandoned the people of Amaranthine, did you tell them it was for your love of a murderer?"

He licked her lip where Conti had bit her, then caught her cry in his kiss when he slid into her warmth. His eyes rolled up and he groaned against her wounded mouth.

Later as she slept, head against his chest, he carefully slid the earring back through her skin and stroked the smooth gemstone with the pad of his thumb.

* * *

The afternoon light slanted into Arainai's courtyard and Crows were filtering in, some still squinting through their hangovers. The Master came out with Saraid on his arm. The dye had not entirely washed from her skin or hair, giving a dark tint to her fiery coloring. He leaned across his balcony, hand on her waist.

"What shall I do with this thing, hmm?" He lifted Conti's ring, a flat ruby in gold, and smiled wolfishly, turning it in the light. Conti's Crows watched, expressionless, as he picked up Saraid's hand and slid the large ring onto two of her slim fingers together. She laughed and put her mouth to his ear, whispering something too hidden for anyone to read, then fit the ring on his hand instead.

Her gaze fell down and she pointed at one of Conti's men. She murmured, but nearly everyone below could read the words on her lips. _That is the man who raped me._

_Hold him, _came the Master's reply. She made a twisting gesture with her hand when the man tried to back away. Magic carried him from the ground and the Master slipped a dagger from his boot. It whirred through the air and struck with a deep thump in the man's chest.

"Let us go inside for wine," he said as magic still carried the suspended corpse. Blood dripped into the water of the fountain. "I wish to learn of your contracts."


	29. Chapter 29

"Yes. Yes, goodnight my friend," Zevran said while Neria unlocked the door to their rooms. He had his arm around her waist and his mouth nearly touching her neck as he spoke to the other Crow. As soon as the door was shut behind them, Neria gave a little shudder and slipped out of Zevran's grasp.

Zevran made for a great chair. "Such a reaction you always have when I touch you in front of people, my Warden, and yet I still flatter myself to think that you like me a little."

The corners of Neria's eyes creased in a hidden smile as she loosened her dress and stripped down to her shift. "You never flatter yourself, my Zevran. The closest you come is an understatement of the truth." He gave a wicked grin. She returned to him and lounged across his lap, her legs flung over one arm of the chair, her head over the other arm, and her bottom between his thighs.

"You know why I do this thing that makes you discomfited, I hope?" Zevran traced a slow line over her belly, smoothing the wrinkles in her shift. "And I hope it is working? Truly most Antivans are not used to the thought of powerful women, and I wish to make it very clear that no one has as much power as you."

"It is working, yes. I am making quite a lot of money in bribes for your favor and I am obeyed when I speak." Neria shifted, curling more on her side and fitting her head firmly to the crook of his shoulder. She stroked her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and he gave a pleased sigh. "And it is a flaw of mine that I am so superstitious about your public affection. I always feel like the Chantry is watching and we are about to be cut down by the Templars."

Zevran curled his hand over Neria's hip and shifted her closer. "The Chantry of Antiva would not dare touch you. You must know that. The Grand Cleric here is as afraid of the Crows as anyone. As you once said to me, I say to you: you are free, my friend."

Neria just closed her eyes and rubbed her face against the side of his neck.

* * *

**_AN:_**_ Hope you like this mini-chapter, which is a transition between That Which Has Passed and That Which Is To Come! _


	30. Chapter 30

Taddeo's hand pressed Neria's waist as he turned her, each step in place with the music. He was as tall as Alistair but not nearly as broad, she always noticed. His hazel eyes were currently showing an interest and care for the lady in his arms, an expression she knew to be calculated, but they flicked away only occasionally at any who came to near to them. Neria watched his face, but she was aware of the calculations going on nearby. Many wanted to come closer to her, some were hoping to escape her notice, and a few were going to try to see that she died.

As the song neared its end Taddeo swept her into a hallway. Someone on the other side of the wall gave a high giggle that was swallowed by conversation, but for the moment, they were alone. He lifted his hand to her face and bent his head to hers for a kiss, and because she knew well that this entire dance was a dream in the Fade, she allowed it.

Fade-Taddeo was a skilled kisser, brushing his lips along hers before delicately applying his tongue, though his mouth felt a little like Anders's.

"Well, well, well. What have we here?" said a mocking voice that Neria knew nearly as well as her own.

Neria pushed away from Taddeo and turned to find Morrigan, looking the same as she did before the Archdemon fell. "Leave us," she said to Taddeo with a flick of her fingers at the dream-Crow. Taddeo went back to the dancing hall with a frown.

"Do you think you are dreaming of me, I wonder?" Morrigan stepped a little closer to Neria, then shifted to walk slowly around her with a swivel of her hips.

Neria shook her head. "I would be a short-lived mage indeed if I could not distinguish between visions and spirits. No. You are either a demon or, through some skill that I have never heard of, Morrigan herself. Either way, I would speak to you."

Morrigan gave her winsome laugh. "Ah, our Neria, ever willing to consort with demons. I count myself fortunate that I may yet speak with you before your inevitable change into an abomination."

Neria laughed in return and opened a door across the hall. "I have missed you, my friend, if you can believe it." She stepped into the raw Fade and Morrigan followed.

So too did Taddeo. "Mistress," he said, as Neria turned to frown at him with blunt reeds waving in the air around her. "Come back to me, please." There was an urgency in his voice.

"I said be gone," Neria snapped, flicking her fingers again. The doorway disappeared, as did Taddeo's form, leaving behind a desire demon, laughing and arching her back. She began to spin, voice echoing through the undulating grassland.

"Why must they always first appear as women?" Neria wondered as Morrigan pushed a gale of ice at the creature. "I have no interest in women. It is foolish." She pulled her mana deliciously wide, for she never got the chance to do this anymore while awake, and launched great, jagged forks of lightning at the demon.

Morrigan began to laugh again, but stopped when something shook Neria. The elf-mage took a deep breath, shut her eyes and opened them, hearing a fading Morrigan cry out, "What? Blast it! No!"

* * *

Zevran awoke to all of his body spasming and his jaw clenched shut. White light seared blinding paths in the blackness of his bedroom, and sparking out from his bedmate. He collapsed. "Neria! Neria!" He gripped her shoulder tightly and the magic stopped. "You were casting in your sleep."

She gasped and lit the bedside lamp. Her face, when he saw it, was an open book. Her brows were drawn up and together, her eyes wide, and she panicked to see that she had hurt him. She flew to the medicine chest, which amused him to no end. If anyone else asked her for healing help, she was utterly disdainful, but if _Zevran_ was hurt, all of her Tower learning came to her and she fussed over him in a manner that he, quite frankly, enjoyed. He had spent too much time in his life bandaging his own wounds and hiding in the cold while he healed to not appreciate this.

Zevran considered Neria, his lover of eight years now, as she spoke quickly and slipped dried elfroot into his mouth. She was very much a part of him, he knew, because when they were apart for any length of time it felt as if half of his body were gone. There was probably a name for this feeling, though he did not know it.

She gently massaged a poultice into a burn on his forehead and he made the appropriate noises where she required them in her monologue. He felt ridiculously, unquestionably secure in his trust in her, the only person that he had ever truly trusted. One time someone had offered her three hundred sovereigns to kill him—_three hundred_ _sovereigns_—and she had brought the man to him, half-burned and quivering, much like a cat presenting a half-dead mouse as a gift. Just as he was constantly feeding her power through his word and touch, she too used all of her considerable manipulative skill to secure his own power. There was no one that she would not betray for his sake.

There was also the matter of... love. He tested the word in his mind gingerly and found that the alarm that the concept once brought had faded with time. After the affair with Conti she was no longer able to tolerate any man's touch save Zevran's, a fact which he viewed with frank possessive joy. He bedded only her, except when killing a mark required otherwise—and yet, as years passed, even this became intolerable to the point where he would send someone else on missions that might lead to it. For three years now they had been disgustingly monogamous, but his insatiable and inventive darling had yet to bore him.

Twice she had been poisoned, though by now she was partially immune. She had survived, obviously, but both times he had left their rooms only when he needed to satisfy his fury by carving small and vital pieces out of the bodies of the still-living men that had done this to her. And every once in a while when she was a little late with her monthly bleeding he amused himself with visions of his Warden with a round-moon belly. These thoughts had once brought to him a measure of trepidation due to the death of his own mother, but as she had not conceived since Ferelden, he allowed himself the fanciful pleasure of imagining Neria's body heavy with his child, Neria nursing a pretty red-headed daughter, and himself swinging the child into the air and catching her.

Neria was watching him now, his chest bandaged from a minor burn beneath his ribs, and he could see in her face that she was aware that he wasn't paying attention. She didn't ask why this was as she turned away to tidy up. She never did. When he had offered her the earring she had accepted it without a single question about what it meant, questions that he would not have been prepared to answer at the time, but she had never taken it off save the once. In their very few sideways, hedging conversations about their relationship, he had always been the aggressor.

Neria came back to bed and fit herself snugly to his side, stroking his neck in a way that she knew he liked. Zevran laid the facts out in his mind, an exercise which he had previously avoided and which she had never asked of him. He... let us call it 'need.' He needed her. He trusted her. He loved her. He would not leave her due to the oath that he imagined she had forgotten about by now (in his mind, she was very much his mistress and he still her man, though the Crows did not know this). He was… yes. He was in a _relationship_ with her. For four years now they had been presenting themselves as husband and wife and he justified this as a shield that gave her protection and power, but tonight he was being honest with himself. The whoreson child in him, sick and frightened in the dark, and the hardened man he had become, neither of them wanted to release this treasure that he found in her. He _wanted_ to be with her every day of his life. He no longer wanted 'husband' to be a convenient word to use and decided he would not allow it to be so. He would be her husband in truth.

Zevran rolled to his side and pulled his wife close against him with a satisfied smile. He tucked the blankets around them both and rubbed her back, whispering kind things to her and teasing away the guilt that still lingered in her stiff shoulders. As the hours passed toward morning, he watched her eyes in the darkness and traded soft words with her. She accepted this slight change in him without comment, but his smile grew as he felt the trembling within her, saw how her face turned at his words like a flower to the sun. She did not know it yet, and would likely accept it as her due, proud thing, but she was about to become the most ludicrously spoiled creature in all of Thedas.


	31. Chapter 31

Neria sat on the ground, hands braced behind her. Distantly she heard the sound of dripping water, echoing loud, then fading away. She was looking at the distant Black City, counting the spires, but the edges of her vision would distort and the number never remained constant.

"Dreaming of the Fade itself now?" The words came without footsteps to precede them. "Unusual, but 'tis a welcome respite from stumbling upon you twisted around your rogue."

"If you had wanted a tryst with myself and Zevran, Morrigan, you need only have asked when you travelled with us." Neria ran her fingers along one of the weeds. It felt silky and burred and insubstantial all at once, like the remembrance of something once touched in childhood.

"Disgusting!" spat Morrigan. Neria looked up at the witch calmly and gave her a smile.

"Fear not, my friend. I only jest. I would never have done such a thing." Neria took a breath and stood, facing the frowning Morrigan. "I like the Fade, so I dream of it sometimes. I cannot imagine living as lesser people do, to not have the power of this place in their blood."

"Yes, it would be comforting, I suppose, if I had allowed myself to be chained as you have." Despite her harsh words, Morrigan's tone was softening, turning to her common gentle mockery.

Neria smiled, just a little. "There is power to be had, too, in the center of the Crows. But this is why you have come to me? To mock me for my weakness in the assassin?"

Morrigan shook her head and spoke briskly. "No. We must speak quickly before you forget how to use Fereldan and lapse into Antivan again in your sleep. There is…" she made a small, awkward sound. "…a debt, one that I owe to you, that I would like to repay. And in return, I would ask to learn a spell of yours."

* * *

Neria laid on her side, watching the edge of the shuttered window in the darkness. It had grown slightly grey with the approaching dawn and the changing color was a focus for her eyes. Her finger traced a long oval around a wrinkle in the sheet and the drag of silk on her skin had become hypnotic as the night passed.

"Aahhh, woman! You are making me insane!" Zevran sat up behind her, pale hair rumpled around his head.

"What?" Neria said a little defensively, peering over her shoulder.

"Four nights, four nights! Four nights now you haven't been sleeping and I am _exhausted!_" He dropped back onto the bed and scrubbed his face with his palms.

"What?" she said again. She rolled onto her other side and peered at him as he dug his hands into his hair. "I haven't been making any noise!"

"You have been _breathing wrong._ If you think I can sleep through the night when you are breathing wrong, you have got another thing coming." He rolled to his side, away from her, and continued in a petulant voice, "So go to sleep and stop breathing wrong. Who knows, it could be that someone will try to murder us again tomorrow with our lack of sleep. Or today, as it may be."

Neria gave a small cat's smile. She crept up behind Zevran and put her arm around him, her hand splayed just beneath his ribs. "Go away," he snapped. "I am very upset with you, woman." She dragged her lips from the round of his shoulder all of the way to his earlobe. "Stop it. You are not listening. I am tired." She paused, her breath light as it diffused through his hair, and then nipped the edge of his ear.

He rolled over all at once and pinned her beneath him. "Did nobody ever teach you how to have a proper argument?" He kissed her quickly and thoroughly, plundering her warm mouth, then lifted his head again and even in the darkness she could see that slight widening to his eyes that meant he was trying not to smile. "I am the Grandmaster of the Crows! I am very terrifying, or so I am told."

She started laughing at him, which only made him grumble more, then worked her legs around his hips to press her heels into the small of his back. She tipped her head and suckled at the inside of his elbow. The terrifying Grandmaster gave the most delicious little sound and she smiled against his skin.

* * *

A few hours later their eyes were both pink-rimmed from exhaustion and their midmorning appointment was cancelled. "Fine. I give up. I am going to ask. Why are you not sleeping, my dearest?" Zevran asked while peeling fruit.

Neria paused very briefly from combing Zevran's hair and released a breath. "It will not be an easy conversation, amora," she said. He was seated between her knees and he leaned back, offering a slice of the fruit. She took it from his fingers because her hands were full and he licked his fingertips clean in a manner that suggested that perhaps their bedroom activities were not entirely finished for the morning.

"We are bold people. Let us attempt this conversation anyway." He nestled further back against her but she pushed his head away to get at the tangles at his nape. She was gentle and slow with the comb.

She took another breath and let it out in a rush. "You want to be a father."

Zevran's shoulders stiffened and his knife paused. He gave a glance to her out of the corner of his eye. "Not an easy conversation, you did say. But what would make you think this?"

"I watch you." Neria avoided meeting his eye. "Not to mention that the vineyard was a large hint, to me anyway. I have never known you to be so concerned over 'investments.'"

Zevran set the fruit and knife aside and turned around try to catch her gaze. "And you must not be upset over this. The child that we lost, you must believe me, it was _not your fault._ Even if you had carried it to the Archdemon, you were so sick afterwards and… and if it left you unable to…"

"No," Neria interrupted. She dropped the comb and touched his face, covering his tattoos, meeting his eyes. "I have learned why I have not conceived after all these years, and I have learned a spell to ensure conception."

Zevran dropped his head, rested his brow against her collarbone, and took a slow breath. "Is this… something you desire then?"

Neria covered her face with her hands. "I don't—Zevran." He looked up and she shifted away a little on the sofa as he came to sit beside her. He studied her and did not speak. "You, you never saw me right after I came out of the Tower. You don't know. I, I don't know _so much_ and I do not tell you." She scrubbed at her hair with her nails, looking down. "The youngest child I saw in the Tower was six years old. I had never seen a baby before I came out. I've still never touched one! I mean, I've read about how the child grows in the womb and where it must come out but I've no idea of the process to make it happen. I mean..." She looked over at Zevran for one pleading moment and then turned her head away, shoulders bowing.

He slid closer and stole her own trick, putting his hand over her belly and running his lips across her nape. "Zevran," she said scoldingly.

"I love how you say my name when you are upset or serious," he told her, tucking his chin on her shoulder. "It reminds me most deliciously of the old days. 'Zevran, get behind that ogre!' 'Zevran, it is your turn to cook supper.' 'Zevran, come into my tent and show me that trick with your thumb again, _right now_.' And I would say, '_Si, amora_,' and sometimes if I was _very_ lucky you would shiver." She started to smile. "Of course, I am also fond of the way you say it when you are in trouble. 'Zev! Zev! Zev!' you say, and I would think, 'Aha! All I have to do is pull some filthy creature off of her and then I am in for a whole lot of gratitude sex,' which you are quite generous with, I must say." He nuzzled behind her ear.

"Hmm," she said, softening against him.

"Truly, my lover, I do not think I have ever heard of you doubting before and it does not suit you." He shifted around to look at her face. "Remember all that we have accomplished together. This small thing?" he made a dismissive sound. "If the unskilled people on the streets can manage it, then it should be easy for us, would you not say? If you wish it, then we will do it. You would be magnificent at this as you are with everything."

"Hmm," said Neria again, studying his face. Like all Crows, his true emotion was difficult to read, but she had been with him for many years now and she thought she saw a vague, distant sort of hope there.

"Also I think I would be remiss if I did not make a comment here about how very well practiced we are at the act of making babies," he added with a sly smile, "and that your magic at such a time has always been so delightful. I would not object to being subject to such arcane forces again, is the message that I am attempting to give to you at this time."

"Hmm."


	32. Chapter 32

In the first month Neria began to complain about the overwhelming fish-stench of Antiva City, something she had never noted before.

In the second month Neria was overcome with a longing for apples and cursed that she had been stupid enough be pregnant in the month of Drakonis, after all the apples were gone, even the shriveled ones. It was also in the second month that, after a hard-fought battle against Zevran's sudden vow of celibacy (born out of fear that he might harm the child), Neria finally broke the man's restraint and had her way with him. This somewhat made up for the apple situation.

In the third month Zevran tied Neria's hair up into a knot while she vomited into the lush plants beside the road. He dampened a cloth for her when she was done and as she looked at him, she saw the way his eyes were lit up because he had been told that her sickness meant the child was seated well in her belly. It was in the third month he learned new curse words in Arcanum from his darling's filthy mouth.

In the fourth month Zevran could not keep his hands away from the hard little swelling of Neria's belly, or her breasts, which grew large enough to warrant a band for the first time in her life. She was lighting the fire for supper in the hearth of their new home when she gasped and declared that the child was moving. Zevran discovered that he could not yet feel the child move too, and was so dramatic in his disappointment that Neria took to pointing out the movement many, many times a day. Her eyes would shine with laughter as she tormented him with her cruel lies.

On a day in the fifth month they were trapped indoors by the rain and Neria was wandering around the house in half-sleepy boredom when Zevran came up behind her to trace his mouth on her ear. She cradled his head in her fingers as he covered her belly with his hands and the child moved.

"Oh," he gasped, then looked down over her shoulder and cajoled. "Do it again for papa! Your mother has been telling me terrible lies!" and as if in sympathy, there was a second gliding movement across his palm before he was done speaking. He hid his smile in her hair.

In the sixth month Neria was sleeping and Zevran had woken to the faint touch of his child under his hand again. He lifted his head and studied her skin, white in the shadows. Neria took a quick breath just then and began to struggle with something in her dreams. Her head turned as she panted; he frowned and lifted his hand, when suddenly her eyes opened. He watched as her eyes dilated from a pinpoint.

"Darkspawn," she breathed before she launched herself from the bed.

Zevran would have rather faced a hundred Loghains again than the sight of his shining Warden screaming at her foes at such a time, but it was only a handful of hurlocks, easily dispatched. Afterward, the few Crows that they had brought with them all confessed that they had known her true name for years.

In the days that followed they told their tales before the hearth, and he watched a memory soften in Neria's eyes. "Duncan," she told him later. "When I think of him, I think that I have done what he wanted of me."

In the seventh month one of the women from the town mentioned to Neria that babies do not sleep for more than two hours at a time for the first year. She had looked at Zevran with slightly murderous eyes and he said, "What? I will be right there the whole time," and the woman just laughed at him, which didn't help.

In the eighth month ghosts chased after Zevran. He did not know what he had been thinking, agreeing to this, for Neria was small and thin and the child he had put in her was growing so very large. He wondered what his mother had looked like before she had borne him. He wondered if she saw her death before his birthing had killed her.

By the time the ninth month arrived, Neria's complaints had long since ceased. She moved slowly and carefully and the child twisted visibly under her skin. She wrote constantly in her grimoire and her eyes were the same hard steadiness that they had been on the long march to Denerim.

She did not go screaming into this battle as was her habit, but buried her face in his neck and fought it in silence for two long days. At the end of this Zevran watched Neria give birth to his son. She touched the boy as he squirmed against his father's chest and before her eyes closed she gave him a name: Shartan.


	33. Chapter 33

Alistair collapsed on the bench with a clatter of armor and a great waft of humid air coming up from his back. He pulled his gauntlets off and grabbed a cloth while making a comical face of exhaustion.

Darisa laughed and pushed a mug of ale across the table toward him. "Ahh, you'll be fine, you big baby. It's your poor recruits I pity! Not one of them will be able to walk tomorrow!"

"Yep, showed them what's what, didn't I?" Alistair said, allowing a touch of pride to color his voice as he mopped his face. "That great big fellow from Gwaren had me worried for a second, but I think I looked, you know, very Warden-y while scrambling around." Darisa laughed harder and Alistair grinned at her, nudging her foot with his. She had pretty pale hair and an interesting tattoo up one side of her face that covered a bad scar she'd gotten while living in Highever alienage. He thought it made her look even more lovely.

"Warden Alistair…?" They both looked up. A tall and dark-haired man with an olive complexion was approaching them.

"Yes?"

The man smiled and bowed for both of them, bowing a little deeper toward Darisa. "Forgive me," he said to her, then looked at Alistair again. "I am glad to meet you, ser. I have a message to give to you in private."

"In… private," Alistair repeated. The man nodded and smiled, his eyes all solicitous kindness. "Forgive me, but I tend to be a bit wary of locking myself in a room with a stranger sporting an Antivan accent. Old habits. You know how it is, I'm sure. I've got scars. Interesting ones"

"Ah. May I?" the man asked, gesturing at the table. Alistair nodded and he seated himself. "Forgive me," he said to Darisa. "My name is Taddeo."

"Darisa."

"I am afraid that my message is indeed of a private nature and meant for Ser Alistair alone. But if there are concerns for his safety, perhaps if we just moved to the corner of the room…?"

"Whatever you're going to say to Alistair you can say to me, too," Darisa responded a little roughly. She leaned back and folded her arms and Alistair grinned. There wasn't a luckier man in the whole world, when you stopped to think about it.

"If I was going to kill you, I'd have gone in through your window or poisoned you," Taddeo said with the barest hint of humor, which made Darisa narrow her eyes further. Alistair just drank his ale, grinning wider. "This walking up to you and introducing myself business, I only kill people that way if I'm really bored. And while it is true that the voyage over here was long, it was not entirely boring, I would not say." He sighed. "Still, I am not in the mood to be reassuring the two of you." He rested his elbows on the table and ignored Darisa. "Master Arainai hopes that you will come visit him at his home in Antiva."

"What? Why?" Alistair put his mug down and Darisa threw him a quizzical look. "Zevran," he said in an undertone for her.

"He hopes that for the sake of old friendship that you will come. He wishes to speak with you in person."

"Yes," Alistair said slowly, leaning back and folding his arms. The padding of his armor felt sticky. Bloody Antivans always making him feel like a great sweaty horse. "Very old friendship, as I recall."

"When did you last see him?" asked Darisa sweetly.

"What, eight years ago? Nine? Right after the Blight, as I recall, before he abandoned all of us and broke Neria's heart, I imagine. " He nodded at Taddeo. "Do you have news of Neria Surana? Zevran was her lover."

Taddeo opened his hands. "I do not know this name. He is married to the Queen of the Crows, Saraid Arainai."

"Huh! Sounds like him, except for the marriage bit. Poor dear Neria." Alistair rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Darisa.

"Don't go," she said quietly. "I don't like it for lots of reasons."

"Right!" Alistair's glance returned to Taddeo. "You can go back there and tell Zevran that if he wants to talk to me, he can see me himself, instead of sending messengers."

Four days later, it was Darisa who convinced Taddeo to leave. It wasn't a pleasant conversation, really, considering she had his arm bent the wrong way with her poisoned knife at his throat, but Alistair enjoyed watching them converse all the same.

* * *

Alistair woke to a knock on the door five weeks after Taddeo's visit. He groaned as his eyelids creaked open. The sun was as noisy as blaring horns across the room and they'd gotten almost no sleep the night before. He tried to slip out of bed, but grumbled when he found that he was hopelessly tangled in the sheets.

Darisa laughed. "You work that one out while I get the door," and she slipped out of the bed like it was nothing, snagging one of his shirts as she went.

"Holy—how did we do this to the mattress? Is it—this corner's inside out! "

Darisa opened the door, Alistair's shirt coming midway down her thighs. "Good morning!"

"Maker's Mercy!" said the smoothly-accented voice on the other side of the door. "I didn't know such loveliness still lingered in this country. You have left me enchanted with such radiant beauty!"

Alistair flung himself out of the bed and crashed on the floor, one ankle still twisted in the sheets. "Alistair!" said Darisa as she rounded the bed after him. She was blushing, damn Zevran. He jerkily managed to kick the sheet away and stood.

"I see that your buttocks have grown only more magnificent with age, my friend." Zevran had followed Darisa into the room and was studying them both with a gleam in his eye. "You must tell me your secret."

"Out!" Alistair pointed behind him at the door. "Out! Out until I have some pants on, for Andraste's sake, man!"

Zevran gave a disappointed sigh. "As you wish." He sauntered away and closed the door behind him.

* * *

Once Alistair had some clothing on and his dignity… no, never mind. Let's don't mention dignity. His dignity would never be recovered. Anyway, Alistair was sitting alone in a room with Zevran, both of them fully clothed. Already things were looking up, from that standpoint at least.

"And you want me to visit your home. For friendship's sake," said Alistair, trying to be firm and cold, "after you _abandoned_ Neria."

Zevran's brows raised and he leaned back in his chair. "This is what she said to you? That I _abandoned_ her, was it?" He didn't look a day older and it really showed how things were fundamentally unjust in the world that Alistair had aged for the better part of a decade whereas Zevran had remained in some sort of elven stasis.

There was a brief pause. "She didn't need to say it."

"Hmm. And what if I tell you that it was Neria's request that you come?"

Alistair sucked in a quick breath of air. "She's alive?" but Zevran was already shaking his head.

"There is much that I cannot tell you until you come, I am afraid." Alistair suddenly noticed that Zevran had dark circles under his eyes and his braids were all fuzzy. It still didn't make him look any older—in fact, it made him look a bit more familiar, like they'd just gone through a battle with three ogres in it and he was too tired to even make a joke about Wynne's bosom. "For Neria's sake, come, but say instead that you are coming for mine. There is a ship leaving Amaranthine City in the morning and I must return to Antiva as swiftly as possible. Will we debate this or will you go?"

Alistair paused again before deflating. "No. I mean, yes. Let's go."

* * *

_**AN:** There's going to be a couple more chapters than I expected. Also, how did Zevran end up with the Surana and Alistair, of all people, get the Tabris-equivalent? Watch, in three chapters this will all turn out to be an elaborate Fade dream._


	34. Chapter 34

The sunlight pierced the clouds and when Taddeo opened the window the sweet smell of rain-washed earth came in. Neria could just touch the square of sunlight with her toes from where she sat as she fed her son, for the furniture was arranged in such a way that a crossbow bolt from the window would not hit her as she nursed in her favorite chair. There had not been an assassination attempt on anyone in the house for months now, but still her Crows thought of this.

Taddeo began to set the table. She watched him as she rocked the baby. The man was every inch an Antivan. Just this morning they had gotten into a big screaming argument over how she was supposed to behave as a woman, both of them flinging their hands in wild gestures, and they had enjoyed it so much that they were going to have one of the better bottles of wine with dinner. Taddeo left the room for the kitchen and Neria switched her son from one breast to the other.

She looked up in time to see a hawk fly through the window and pour its body into a different mold. Morrigan's boot made a floorboard creak and underneath this she heard the distant brush of Taddeo's foot on the kitchen floor.

"_Taddeo, a friend of mine is come!"_ she called out quickly in Antivan, and it must have been only quick enough to shift his hand a little, for the dagger whirred a foot to the side of Morrigan's head and lodged itself into the wall. Plaster cracked and a great handful fell out with a bang on the ground. Shartan startled, his little arm flinging wide, and Taddeo swore.

Neria rocked her baby until he resumed his noisy gulping and Morrigan glared at the mess of plaster on the floor. "Stupid man!" she said disdainfully, but after her yellow eyes raised toward the kitchen she gave a smile instead and said in her mock-sweet voice, "Oh, 'tis the man that you dream about so often."

This made a startled laugh burst from Neria. Taddeo stepped into view, looking at Neria very briefly before returning to his study of Morrigan.

"Taddeo, this is Morrigan," Neria said. "She was a companion of mine when Zev and I were facing the Blight." Taddeo nodded, but Morrigan spoke before he did.

"Yes, and where is your Zevran, I wonder?" Morrigan said, dismissing Taddeo from her sight to focus on Neria. She stepped delicately over the mess of the plaster. "Where did you send him? It has been many a year since you have been parted from him, unless I am mistaken." She lifted her head and looked down her nose at Shartan. He was starting to slow his drinking in a sleepy way.

"He will be home soon," Neria answered smoothly. The sun was creeping across the floor and she could no longer reach the light with her toes.

"My own child is yet too young to survive long without me," Morrigan said, continuing her inspection of the baby. "You would do well to remember this as the conversation proceeds."

Neria slowly drew her eyes up to Morrigan's face. She said nothing, but waited, her fingers stroking the fine and delicate hair on Shartan's head.

"The spell," Morrigan said, dipping her head. "I see that it served you well. I see that you are quite skilled with blood magic still when it serves your purposes, though I've no doubt you still hide it."

Neria was aware of Taddeo's sharp eyes on her face, his ears listening, but she didn't glance his way. "The darkness in my blood would prevent a child otherwise," she said reservedly.

"Yes, your blood demands many sacrifices of you, does it not? Let me ask you a question, you who I once named sister. What is your greatest regret?"

Shartan slipped from Neria's breast, asleep now, and she covered herself in silence.

"You would not answer me? Then let me guess at it." Morrigan gave a little smile and paced toward Neria again.

"You will not step closer to her." Taddeo's words were like stones set into the room and Morrigan stopped at once.

"You are a mage and an assassin and a wife now and a mother, but above everything else, you are at your heart a true Grey Warden, are you not? You believe in your noble calling just as much as that stupid templar, though you are much less noisy about it." Neria continued looking at Morrigan's face as the witch spoke sarcastically, but it felt like looking into the sun and her eyes stung. "You believe that you failed your greatest task. Foolish mageling. I gave you and Alistair life and you betrayed me!"

Taddeo nearly growled in his throat and rounded the room to stand beside Neria's chair. "Should I see her off?"

"No," Neria breathed. She traced her son's cheek, his skin slipping under her fingers like silk.

Morrigan's chin lifted. "I have seen your heart's desire. I know that you would murder a child in your foolish, selfish ignorance, after all that I have done for you." She gestured sharply toward Shartan and Taddeo jerked once. Morrigan took two steps back. "The tie that you crafted between your tainted blood and Zevran's body is strong, but the spell that I taught you is not what you think it is."

Neria curled Shartan into her chest and cupped her hand over the back of his head as he slept, but still she didn't speak. Morrigan's eyes were burning.

"Let me tell you the nature of the spell you wrought: on the day that my child dies, your child will die alike. Stay well away from us, and it is possible that he will grow to be a man."

"Wait," said Neria, but Morrigan turned and shaped into light again. A hawk flew out of the window in bluster of feathers.

Taddeo slammed the shutters and barred them. Neria bowed her head over Shartan's small body. He smelled of milk and lavender and powder. She closed her eyes.


	35. Chapter 35

Zevran tried to make himself comfortable in the hammock, squirming against the ship's swaying. He sighed and stuck his booted foot up at the ceiling right above his head.

"What is she like? The Hero of Ferelden?" Darisa tried to sound casual and dismissive but Zevran was gratified to hear the excitement beneath this, based out of awe for his own Warden, no doubt.

He tilted in the hammock to allow one leg to dangle a little. It was a balancing act but well worth it when he saw the look on her face. "Hmm?" he said lazily. "Alistair hasn't told you about her?"

"He hasn't been with her all of this time like you have," Darisa answered. Her blue eyes were going over the tattoos on Zevran's face. "And, I don't know, maybe you know her better."

"How shall I sum up such a lady for you?" Zevran smiled, and he felt how his expression went soft as he thought of Neria (he judged Darisa to not be a threat at the moment and allowed her to see this emotion). "Yes, here is something that your Alistair will not know. She truly has no idea how to act like an elf. This is something that she must overcome when she makes to kill a mark."

Zevran watched Darisa's mouth harden as she struggled to reconcile Neria the hero with Neria the assassin, and his smile grew. He knew taking on missions was something Neria rarely did, but he wasn't about to tell Darisa that. "And you really kill people just for money?" she finally asked.

"Mm-hmm," he said, hooding his eyes.

Alistair walked into the small cabin. He took one look at Zevran, lounging in a canvas hammock, and then glanced at Darisa, taking in the flush. "Oh no," he said, half-teasing. "I'm not going to have you steal her away, too."

All at once Zevran's whole torso and neck felt like it was on fire, so quickly did his sudden rage overtake him. He rolled onto his back where he was mostly hidden in the hammock, but when he spoke, his tone was carefully light and friendly. "Is this what happened the last time?" he said. "Ah, my apologies then. Here I thought that you had continued casting longing glances at my lover—a woman who you had never so much as kissed, as I recall—all over Ferelden and back. You could understand my confusion, perhaps, considering that the woman I was wooing at the time decided to follow me to Antiva and take me for her husband. But no, I apologize to you, my old friend. Clearly I wronged you when I allowed her to choose for herself who she wanted."

There was silence outside of the hammock, and Zevran smiled a little as it dragged awkwardly on. His anger still made the room feel entirely too hot and so he indulged himself by imagining the many ways that he could kill Alistair, if he wanted to. Finally the other man spoke.

"Erm, I feel as if I owe you a bit of an apology myself there, Zevran."

Zevran sat up cross-legged in the swaying cloth and took in both Alistair's flushing and the lovely way that Darisa was glaring at her fellow Warden. "No, no, Alistair, you mustn't think of it." He put his elbows on his knees. "Though in all seriousness I feel that I must tell you that, while I have no idea what you said to Neria when she left for Antiva, if you continue to make her feel guilty I will be forced to break your nose at a bare minimum."

Alistair rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at Darisa's face, pinched with anger of her own. "Fair enough," he said in a strangled voice.

* * *

Alistair found Zevran near the prow of the ship, where the wind of their passing blew quickly by. The assassin was sitting on the deck, all lanky-limbed and boneless, and when he glanced up at him, Alistair noticed again how drawn he seemed.

"Are you all right?" Alistair spoke above the noise of the wind as he found a seat on a huge coil of fat rope. Zevran gave a humorless little smile. "I mean, you just look so…" he waved his hand at the elf. "…run down."

Zevran sighed and shook his head. "And still I am not allowed to comment on your hair. You are an unfair man, my friend."

Alistair snorted. "No. I was wondering if you're in trouble. If that's why you need us." He paused and leaned closer. "You can trust us. We'll help."

And this made Zevran laugh. He leaned back and his mirth was long and rich; Alistair smiled uncertainly. "No, no good Warden. Your care is touching." He gestured at his body. "This, this that you are seeing, this is a man gone soft. It seems that I am no longer able to sleep properly without skinny limbs digging into my ribs and the threat of lightning being cast on me in my bed. It is troubling that I am so soft, yes, but not necessarily a situation that I need a pair of Wardens to come and rescue me from."

"She does that?" Alistair asked, fascinated. "Casts spells on you on accident?"

"Well, truly, it was only the once," Zevran answered with a wicked smile. "On purpose, she has cast various spells on me many, many," he licked his lip slowly, "many times."

"Augh! You're disgusting! Stop making that face at me!"

* * *

"The truth is that we were unable to contact you without giving our enemies more reason to go after you." Zevran settled himself back on the bedroll some distance from the campfire and looked more comfortable than he had appeared on the ship. "You are a very popular man with the Crows. You should ask Neria sometime about all that she has done to keep you safe, while you sat in Ferelden stewing in your ingratitude, or so I like to imagine."

"I did no such thing!" Alistair protested, sitting even further from their supper fire. Nobody needed warming in this hot Antivan air. "But I… yes, I did not know. And yet something has changed that you can invite me over now?"

Zevran glanced up, but it was only Darisa moving back into the brush, fairly quiet as she kept watch. "I suppose now is a good time to tell you. We had to move out of Antiva City when Neria became pregnant." He slipped a glance sidelong just as Alistair broke into a great smile.

"Maker's breath, Zev, that's wonderful news! I'm so sorry to have called you away! Is she coming due soon?"

Zevran laughed and folded his hands behind his head as he looked up at the stars. "If you think I would have left her alone while she was still with child then you are greatly mistaken. Our son will be a year old in Harvestmere." He looked at Darisa again, or where Alistair imagined Darisa to be, his gaze long and measuring. "My son is the secret that must not be heard of in your country. The Chantry of Ferelden has no business knowing of my family."


	36. Chapter 36

Neria's arms crept around Zevran and he held her tightly as she buried her face in his shoulder. They were murmuring things to each other in Antivan and Alistair found himself looking away, smiling down at Darisa. He caught her hand and smiled wider for how her eyes were going soft.

There was a knocking sensation at his knee. The source of it turned out to be the banging hand of a baby, standing on wobbly legs with hair like a red-gold dandelion clock. "Mmmamabaaa," he said, then leaned forward to taste Alistair's greave.

Darisa plucked him up at once, smiling and touching his little pointed ear. "You must be Shartan," she said to the baby, who shrieked and reached for Alistair. Alistair felt flattered by this, then felt foolish about feeling flattered. "Take off your gauntlets, love."

"Only these two would choose such a name," Alistair said fondly. Gauntlets discarded, he took the baby, who immediately began banging away at his pauldron. "With that name and your parents, you are destined to become a hero or a heretic, aren't you?" He tried to sound jolly but only managed to sound awkward, trying to hold the boy securely against him without letting his soft little legs get too cold on his breastplate.

He was rescued by Zevran, who plucked his son away. Shartan gave another shriek and tried to fling himself back at Alistair, which made Alistair grin. "Yes, yes, I know that Alistair is much shinier,_ cucciolo,_ but your papa is much prettier. Look at you! You are half grown again while I went on your mamma's errand!" He tickled Shartan's neck, which made the boy giggle instead. The whole scene was bordering on the surreal in Alistair's mind.

"You convinced Alistair to come!" said Neria, hand on Zevran's back and looking up at Alistair. She spoke now with a very faint Antivan accent, the cadence of her Fereldan words mimicking that of her adopted home.

"Yes, I am a ridiculously awesome husband, am I not? Deliciously handsome, swift blade, provider of fancy homes, fetcher of reluctant companions…" He pinned his eyes on Darisa and winked. "I must tell her this for she would never think to say it herself."

Darisa smirked and Neria looked curiously at her. "Ah," said Alistair. "May I present to you the Warden Darisa, formerly of Highever? And Darisa." He couldn't help himself. He started grinning. "It is my honor to introduce you to Neria Surana, the Hero of Ferelden herself."

Darisa crossed her arms and bowed deeply to Neria, who flushed beneath her freckles and backed away. "Neria Arainai," said the Hero when she seemed to have caught her breath, as the baby and its father babbled at each other behind her. "I am Neria Arainai now."

* * *

"He's just such a charming little boy!" said Darisa as Neria set bread on the table. Zevran tore off a piece at once and gave it to Shartan, who was seated on his father's knee.

"And you're so lucky to have him," added Alistair, watching as Shartan tried to fit the hunk in the wrong way and covered half of his face with crumbs. "I've never really met another Grey Warden who is a parent." Here Alistair and Neria shared a glance for the space of two heartbeats.

"It is true, what you are wondering, my good friend Alistair," purred Zevran. "I am so excessively virile that I am even able to get a child on a Warden."

* * *

They were in the middle of supper when Neria spoke of Morrigan's visit. Alistair went pale and dropped his knife onto the plate. Zevran started speaking quickly and Darisa was silent, watching all of them with pale, measuring eyes. Neria stood.

"This is what we are going to do: nothing."

"What are you talking about?" Zevran demanded, jiggling the baby on his knee while looking with fiery eyes up at her. "We will kill Morrigan, take the child, take it for our own! _Brasca!_ She thinks that she can get away with this? She thinks that she can touch _our son?_" His voice grew louder. "We are not what we once were, when we lived in Antiva City, but she cannot think that she will succeed in this! Come, we will blackmail the Circle again. She hunts you in the Fade, yes? Then we will hunt her!"

Neria shook her head. "No, we will not, Zev. I could raise a mage-child," she said, and Darisa followed her gaze to where it rested on Shartan. "But I know this child of Morrigan's. It is too strong for me. I would fail to teach whatever is needed, and we could all be destroyed. Our son would die anyway, if this were to happen."

"You… you met this child?" Alistair asked, his voice hushed.

Neria gave a half-smile and looked down. "Only on the day that I failed to kill it. I survived because it did not take notice of me as it passed through me, I think. If I tried to stop this child, it would be like trying to stop a mountain falling down by holding up a shield. I can do many things, but…" she stopped. She ran the edges of her fingers down Zevran's cheek until he covered her hand with his, and in her eyes…

Darisa liked Alistair quite a lot. He had saved her from the alienage and had worked so patiently to win her trust. He was kind and funny and she smiled every time she saw him. She had fought with everything in her to be brought here, to protect Alistair, until Zevran had given in out of impatience. She thought that perhaps she even loved Alistair, but she did not look at him like how Neria was looking at Zevran. Alistair told her of the assassin who had stolen the mage, but Darisa now thought that he had been too young or too blinded by his own feelings to see the truth: Neria would throw herself on the assassin's blade, so long as Zevran held it.


	37. Chapter 37

"If he has magic and I can't teach him, I'd like you to take him to the Ferelden tower," Neria said. Shartan was making his stiff-legged way along the couch toward Alistair and gave a happy, wordless shriek upon encountering the Warden's knee. "And if anything happens to me and Zev—and it might, of course it might, he was the grandmaster and I'm still a maleficar—I'd like you to raise him."

Alistair lifted Shartan up and the baby's face split into an enormous, gummy grin. Sunlight filled him and he smiled in return.

* * *

They rocked side to side on the boat to Antiva City. Darisa was looking out over the water. Alistair was looking at her. He moved close to her and slung his arm around her. She stiffened; he hesitated a moment. He ran his fingers gently through her hair and kissed her temple. She slowly leaned into his arm with a little sigh.

* * *

He came as often as was reasonable, which translated to a bit more than once a year. His fourth visit was the first one where Shartan remembered him, hanging out the window and shouting, _unclo, unclo, unclo!_ before hurtling out the door on dusty bare feet.

Darisa wouldn't come with him on the fifth visit, and before he left Vigil's Keep the Warden-Commander pulled him in for a private meeting and made him carry a letter away.

The real shock came when he walked into Neria's house. Shartan was on his shoulders, yanking his hair and talking so fast that Alistair couldn't even understand the Fereldan bits and Neria came into view. The air felt thick then with the words would not be spoken: Neria would die before this second child grew to adulthood.

* * *

Shartan crashed into Alistair's bed the morning when Neria's pains had shut her and Zevran up in their room. The boy tugged at his uncle's ears to try to make them less round and argued with him over the uselessness of a shield when his own superior papa used two blades. The shield became a point of some obsession after their honey-soaked breakfast. Shartan wanted to hold it and Alistair helped him by taking most of the weight until the boy admitted defeat.

The midwife came out of the room around lunchtime and muttered to herself in Antivan while fetching things from the kitchen. Shartan listened with round eyes.

"What did she say?" asked Alistair.

"She said that it is bad that papa is in the room with mamma." Shartan seemed troubled by this and Alistair put a soothing hand on his back. He frowned. "That is stupid. My papa keeps my mamma safe because she can't do it herself because the baby is big." He looked up at Alistair, brows lifted. The boy was so beautiful. He was nut-brown with red-gold hair lightened from the sun and tilted gold-flecked brown eyes. "Is this right, unclo?"

"Your papa and mamma know what they are doing."

* * *

There was a bit of a kerfuffle at bedtime when neither mamma nor papa were present to see Shartan off to the Fade. The boy kept insisting that Alistair was doing it wrong and Alistair couldn't help but agree. It took over an hour for the sobbing child to fall asleep against his neck. And even though the last hour had been hell, really, he sat there in the lamp-lit evening and stroked Shartan's small back, thinking about his own child that he would never meet, filled with affection for this child that he did know.

* * *

Taddeo shared breakfast with Shartan and Alistair the next morning. They watched the child play among the trellises and Alistair expressed some worry about how Neria had not yet given birth. The Crow shrugged as if uncaring.

"I don't think the mistress gives birth very well. She nearly died with the last one. I would not be surprised if this one does kill her." He threw an apple core into the field. "The master will be a real bastard to deal with after. With any luck, I'll get a raise out of it."

Never go to a Crow for reassurance on matters of life or death, Alistair remembered.

* * *

The midwife fetched Alistair in a flurry of irritated and incomprehensible Antivan. He followed her into the bedroom and found that Neria did look nearly dead. The midwife passed out of the room carrying a basin of bloody water and… yes, that was also blood on the floor. Zevran's hand was gentle as he smoothed Neria's sticky hair and he chuckled roughly at the look on Alistair's face. "It was easier for her this time," he said with a kind of black humor.

"It was?" Neria opened her eyes to look at him as she said this and, _Maker_, yes, she had two black eyes, and the horrifying thing is that Alistair hadn't even noticed when he first came in. This made him very, very glad that he wouldn't see Darisa go through this.

"_Si, amora_," Zevran answered. "Do you not think so? It went faster and… ah, nevermind. Why should I be talking about this, yes?" He kissed her temple and went back to stroking her hair.

They gave Alistair the baby, a tiny reddened bald thing with one ear-tip folded over. He carefully supported the head and felt like an enormous clumsy brute while holding it close. "It's a girl," Neria told him, and she grinned through her bruised face. "Her name is Surana."

"We wanted to give her a name as grand as Shartan's, but felt Adraste might be a bit much," Zevran explained, and they both laughed. The sound made the baby's face go through a series of contortions before she settled back to sleep. Alistair cradled her against his chest, already plotting for how to make his next visit come sooner.

* * *

_To the Warden-Commander Nathaniel of Ferelden:_

_First, I extend my greetings and well-wishes to you. I would like to say that you have exceeded all of my expectations in how you have caused the Order to flourish in our country, but this would not be the truth. I knew when first I saw you that you would be a Warden of exceedingly good quality and that the honor of the Howe name would be restored through your actions. You have proved my faith in you repeatedly and I wish for only more of the same for you in the future. Amaranthine is in very good hands._

_I am afraid that circumstances are such that as yet I am unable to return. Should her majesty the Queen see fit to fulfill the boon she offered me upon her coronation, I will reconsider. Until that day I hope that you can be reassured that I am still a loyal Grey Warden and continue to harry the darkspawn where I am as best as I am able. I do what I can to support Vigil's Keep from a distance. You may ask Alistair of my activities on your behalf if you like._

_Kind regards,_

_Warden Neria_


	38. Chapter 38

His room was empty when Alistair returned to it. Darisa was gone to South Reach for recruiting, but a letter she left under his pillow made it absolutely clear that she would have nothing to do with him when and if she returned.

Everything felt so quiet. It was as if the walls of the Keep itself were holding their breath. Even the noise of his armor as he stripped it away was muted in the hush. He was surrounded by Grey Wardens but felt so alone, his heart left behind in Antiva. The quiet in the room was broken when he slammed the door, leaving in search of Oghren.

* * *

Alistair stood atop the wall, vaguely reaching out his senses for darkspawn but mostly just watching Ser Pounce-a-lot stalking through the yard in arthritic slowness as twilight fell.

"Look at this." Alistair turned around to find the Warden-Commander walking toward him on silent footsteps. Nathaniel was holding a smooth, slightly curved sheet of wood in two hands.

"Hmm?" said Alistair, trying to be casual as his mouth went dry with nerves. The shield he'd been trying to make for Shartan had split two days ago and he'd chucked it into the hearth. "A… piece of wood?" He grinned and came forward as if humoring the Commander.

"A very nice piece of wood, I think. Good hardwood. No flaws in it. Too bad it's too small for us to use, really." Nathaniel handed it to Alistair without looking and went to the wall.

"Er, yes," said Alistair, turning the wood over. His heart quickened. It was _perfect._ He glanced over at Nathaniel.

"Well, goodnight. I'm turning in." Nathaniel paced away without looking at Alistair again. For his part, Alistair gaped after the Commander for a while before hurrying off to his room.

* * *

Alistair answered his door and peered down at Sigrun. "Hello!" she said brightly, brushing past him to enter his room. She had a bag on her shoulder which went clink, and while Alistair was a fan of bags that went clink, especially these past seven months, Sigrun was not one that he normally associated with clinking bags.

"Mmmmmm, your room smells nice!" she said as he turned around to follow her. "Like wood shavings!" She gave him an entirely too-sharp _look_, which made him shut the door.

"Oh! Yes, er, thank you," he said, willing himself not to look at his fireplace where the shavings themselves were.

Sigrun set her clinking bag on the table and turned around to face him, a calculating look on her face still. "Okay. I've got some of Oghren's good stuff here and I'll share it with you if you promise not to get mad about what I'm about to tell you."

"What?" said Alistair, his voice cracking, which was unfair, considering that he had recently noticed the beginnings of wrinkles around his eyes. "Nothing good ever comes after a statement like that, you know."

Sigrun was practically vibrating, however, her fingers linking as she raised on her toes. "I went through your things—don't get mad!—and I found the shield!" she said quickly as Alistair felt himself turning several colors in succession. "Please let me paint it! I can do a really good griffon and I've been dying to! Please, please please!"

"What? You—what?" Alistair thumped heavily into his chair. "Andraste's knickers! Why were you—have you done this before? You'd better give me some of that drink."

Sigrun poured him a drink and chattered giddily while laying out her paints. She went straight for the shield where he'd hidden it under his bed and pulled it out. "This really is good!" Alistair said, looking at the faintly greenish liquid in his cup. "Oghren just gave it to you? Usually he only shares the swill."

"Yeees…" said Sigrun slowly in a way that implied that perhaps Oghren didn't know the bottle was missing yet and poured him another glass. She herself drank straight from the bottle.

She gave him a third glass when the shield was halfway done. She really was good at painting, he thought, but his eyes were tracing the tattoos on her face.

The bottom of the third drink made him do three things: notice that her merry eyes were a pale sky-blue, become troubled that there was a casteless brand on her cheek, and finally, try to gently wipe this tattoo away from her skin with his thumb.

The kiss that occurred afterwards could not rightly be blamed on the third glass, however. Judging by Sigrun's wild grin, the kiss was something she had planned long before she came into his room. His last coherent thought of the night was that he should _never_ argue with one of Sigrun's plans again.

* * *

Two days later Alistair opened his door to another knock to find a different dwarf standing on the other side.

"Heeeeey there little pike-twirler," Oghren said. "I had a thing at the still and there was this… stuff that'll peel, I mean seal…. sod it." He held out a jar. "Varnish for the paint job."

"What?" Alistair's voice raised again in shock. He snatched the jar. "Does _everyone_ know?"

Oghren chortled at him, then folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "So," he drew out his snickering in a suggestive way. "You and Sigrun, eh? Think you're man enough for a dwarf? If you need any, heh heh heh, tips…"

The door went bang as Alistair slammed it.


	39. Chapter 39

Alistair showed Shartan how to properly slide the shield over his arm and onto his hand and immediately the boy went tearing up the path. "Papà, papà!" he shouted, waving his wooden sword. "Look, I will be a Warden like mamma and uncle! Raaaa darkspawn!" and he struck out at Zevran the moment he came close enough.

Zevran shifted out of the way of the wild blow and swept Shartan up over his shoulders. "Oh, yes, this is a fine thing, to have my boy wanting the same terrible fate as you. Ah! _Figiolo, _mind papà's kidneys!" He spun the boy to the ground and disarmed him in one lithe movement.

"Oh, sorry, Zev, I didn't think about that," said Alistair with some dismay as Shartan scrambled into the grass after the sword.

"No, no no no!" Zevran clapped Alistair on the shoulder. "It is a princely gift, I think! And it is good to see you come, brother." He laughed as a wooden sword went _clang_ in an attack on Alistair's thigh. "Imagine that I would ever call you something like that. Nearly makes me regret all of the times I spat in your food."

"What? No you didn't! Did you?" Alistair followed Zevran into the house then yelped. "Ow! Maker, Shartan, you're really good at finding the chinks in the armor, aren't you?"

* * *

"No!" shouted Shartan. "My shield is not for babies!" He worked Surana's fingers free from the edge of the gift and she dropped back on her hands and knees. He ran off, wiping the wood where she had gummed it.

Alistair picked her up. "Hello, little one. I'm your uncle Alistair." Surana really favored her father in looks, except for the dark auburn hair, which was too short still to cover her eartips. She braced her tiny hands against Alistair's shirt. "Your brother used to call me unclo, but I believe he's already outgrown that."

Surana regarded Alistair with a little line between her soft eyebrows. "Mmmnaba," she responded. She studied a fistful of his tunic before putting it in her mouth with an air of scholarly inquiry.

* * *

Alistair hurried back to the Vigil this time, three bottles of wine in his pack, and was greeted with, "Heeeeey! You're not dead yet! And I'm not either! Funny how that keeps happening." He swept Sigrun up for a kiss, gave her shiny Antivan presents, which made her flush and look guilty, and kissed her some more, which earned him some husky giggles. Maker have mercy on him, he felt like there were bubbles in his veins and by the way she kept knocking him down, he didn't think it was just him this time.

* * *

"I am not a _child,_ Zevran!"

"Yes, you have said this and I have told you that I know this and now we are just going in circles!" Neria's eyes latched on to a glass on the table beside her, the perfect size for throwing at his head. The argument had been going on for _two days_ now and they had both reached that head-buzzing level of fury where you just want to choke the one you love for a minute. "You think with that oath I've been keeping for all these years that now, _now_ I'm just going to let you dance into the city like 'kill me now, I'm—"

"What oath?" she interrupted rudely. "What oath are you talking about?"

He made a noise and he was looking at the glass too, as one might look at a serpent to see if it will strike or not. "The oath from when I met you. Gah, you are an infuriating woman! You are not going—"

"Are you kidding me?" she stalked toward him and jutted a finger at the window. "This is why? You horrible, stubborn man! I never meant to hold you to that! I release—"

Zevran was across the room so fast that Neria jerked back, and still his hand went lightly over her mouth, startling her into silence. "Don't say that," he said, his golden eyes burning. "Never say that, _amora_. You have your earring and I have my oath. Never say it."

He took his hand away and kissed her so hard that their teeth clicked together. She arched up into his body and brought a leg around his waist and he immediately dug a hand into her bottom, fingers pressing into the cleft. She ground her hips into his. He lowered her to the hard floor and pulled open her clothes enough to fall upon her throat and breasts with his teeth and he vaguely knew that her hands were inside of his breeches, her claws digging into the underside of his bottom.

He worked two fingers into her and his thumb quickly across her little nub to make her scream as she fought with his belt. The moment she was ready for him he stabbed into her and she was wet enough that he slid all of the way in. _Mine_, he thought, a chant with each jarring thrust. He kept his thumb in her curls, circling roughly so that she writhed beneath him, her shoulders and head and hips banging and bruising on the floor; she _screamed_ his name and he thought_, mine, my Neria, my Warden, mine, mine _until she clenched around him and he emptied himself into her.

He draped his shaking body over hers and she ran her greedy hands up in his hair and they kissed each other. Zevran had been in Andraste's own temple but this thing beneath him, these eyelids beneath his mouth and these lips on his cheek and this smile and this flavor on his tongue, this was _holy._

* * *

The front door was slammed open hard enough that it cracked the table next to it and men came pouring in, bellowing. Shartan froze like a startled hare. Something passed over his skin and all of the men turned _white_ and his mother was there. She shouted at him to take his sister into their room and lock the door. He ran up the hall with banging noises behind him and Surana's hand in his, but when he shut the door a man forced it open before he could lock it.

There was blood on his big sword and he was swinging it down as Shartan scrambled backwards and his voice didn't work but if it did he would be begging, _stop, stop, stop_ and just then something tore inside of Shartan and the man_ stopped._ His body, his sword, even his clothes were like stone, hanging in the air.

And then his mother was there again. "Cover Surana's eyes and _don't look_," she told him, and while he did put both hands over Ana's face he saw out of the corner of his eyes the way that Mamma's hands moved and saw the way that the man's body was crushed and how he fell to the ground with some wet thumps.

Mamma had just turned to them when Papà came into the room. He dragged the man's body out, locked the door, and pushed a chest in front of it.

"I think that's all of them," he said breathlessly. He came to the three of them and crouched on the ground, pulling Mamma and Shartan and Surana into his arms. "Everyone is all right, yes? Nobody is hurt? You are not hurt, are you little one?" he said into Surana's face. She shook her head and Papà looked and sounded like a wild animal but it was _Papà_. He started kissing them and they all started laughing giddily and everything was fine, _fine_.

* * *

Men were building trellises in the fields, half of which looked as if they'd been seared.

"What happened to the vines?" asked Alistair as he came in, and suddenly Neria and the children were running and flinging themselves at him, which was rather startling, because he could count on one hand the number of times Neria had ever willingly put her arms around him.

"Some people from the village thought to teach the knife-ears a lesson about owning land." Neria released him quickly, but he could tell she was shaking from the brief embrace. He tightened his arms around Shartan and Surana was dancing on his foot, her arms wrapped tightly around his leg.

"Maker's breath! Were they just stupid?"

Neria gave a laugh. "The Reverend Mother of the village chantry thought so! We've killed two Grand Clerics already, so I'm glad to see that's paid off. No templars were sent." She continued on, ignoring Alistair's bug-eyed look. "I'm so glad you're here. Zev and Taddeo are off reminding the Crows why he's still a Master, even if he's not the Grandmaster anymore. I wish I could have gone with them. Will you stay with us until they come back?"

"Of course, my sister."

* * *

The children watched their mother leave the room and crept closer to Alistair. Surana spoke first.

"Do you say knife-ears too because your ears are round, uncle?" she asked, high voice completely innocent.

"_Never." _Alistair crouched down before them.

"I wish I were human like you," Shartan muttered at the ground.

Alistair gathered his babies up in his arms, the backs of his eyes stinging, and they both were shivering as they clung to his neck. Yes, he would stay until Zevran came back. If Zevran didn't come back, Alistair would stay until he died.


	40. Chapter 40

Neria straddled Zevran's waist. Her thumb rubbed the lines between his brows, which had deepened a little with time. The window was open and the sound of Shartan giving a high shriek came in, followed swiftly after by Alistair's laughter.

"I had to kill Taddeo," Zevran said, watching her from beneath her hand. "Truly I admire that he took the chance when it was there. It was a brilliant plot. I wager that he would have killed Piezo in two years."

She looked measuringly down at his eyes as her wrist turned and fingertips smoothed an eyebrow. The tiny striations of color in his irises were so lovely and his lashes were golden and dark at once around his eyes.

"I had come to think that perhaps he would not betray us," she said, watching the tiny shifting dance of his eyes as his gaze moved over her face.

"Did you? It was not just me then."

She touched the smallest tattoo on his face, her fingertips loving the mark. "The people in the village are not pleased with those who attacked us. We have done well by those that we employ and there was not as much unrest as I thought would come after you killed those last two."

Zevran's strong hands at her waist tugged forward. "Come here, my sweet. I'm afraid that I must kiss you again."

Their kiss was languid, lips sliding slowly together, tongues familiar and welcome as they curved and slipped in warm touches.

"Did you know," murmured Zevran against her mouth, "That most people tire of each other after nearly twenty years?"

"Most people do not have the good fortune to bed the mighty Zevran or the deadly Neria." She regally offered her throat to him and felt the shape of his smile as he moved his mouth along the line of her pulse.

* * *

Surana had consented to show Alistair her favorite hiding place. They sat there under the stars, she in a nightgown and slippers, and he waited, looking upwards. She loved him, of this he had no doubt, but he suffered from being Not As Dashing As Papà in her eyes much more than he had with Shartan. He found that the best way to earn her trust was to wait quietly until she let spill her little treasures. Once, when he lived in the stables of Redcliffe, he had made friends with a mouse by waiting patiently by its hole until it finally was tempted by the bread he offered, and this felt rather like that.

"I wish that I had magic like Shartan has," she finally said, and Alistair looked down at her small, earnest face, struggling not to embarrass her by smiling. "I would be much better at it than he is."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Shartan doesn't stop talking long enough to listen to Mother and properly _think."_ This was a lot to take from a six year old child in pigtails who looked, in Alistair's mind, as if she were only four years old, but he gave a grave frown and nodded. "He's also very rude sometimes. Is 'rude' the right Fereldan word?"

"Yes, I think so. Although I also think that he's just behaving like a brother to you." Alistair paused thoughtfully. "With all of the time that Shartan is spending on magic, you can take comfort in how quickly you'll get better at him with daggers."

This won Alistair a wide grin. "Papà says that I will be very deadly already," she said with some pride, and he grinned back at her.

* * *

These are the things that Sigrun would do: hide books like a squirrel, slip alcohol in his drinks without asking him, volunteer for the very most dangerous and suicidal-sounding missions (which meant he always went with), use a pinch of dirt as a seasoning when cooking, giggle for the first little while every time he had his head between her legs, trick him into dropping hints about the children in Antiva, use him like shiny bait for the darkspawn before her daggers came out, steal things out of market stalls, and use her stealth to put the things back (most of the time).

This is what Sigrun would not do: marry Alistair. But she would stay with him until she fulfilled her promise to the Legion, and this was almost enough.

* * *

Shartan squirmed quickly out of Alistair's embrace, looking embarrassed. Surana made up for it by swinging from Alistair's neck and even bestowing a kiss on his cheek.

"Follow me," he whispered to her after he'd let her down.

Once they were in his room Alistair pulled a large book bound in deep blue from his pack. He sat down with her on the floor and showed her the title page, on which was ornately written, _Surana's Grimoire._

"But I'm not a mage," she whispered.

"Well, it's like this." Alistair flipped through the creamy blank pages and they rustled richly. "I've known a few of the witchy folk in my time, and I've noticed something about grimoires. They don't just use them for spells. They use them for secrets. And if there's anyone that I think probably knows a lot of important secrets, it's Surana Arainai."

She nodded at him, wide-eyed and earnest.

* * *

The darkspawn surged from both sides of the tunnel and Alistair bellowed his war-cry. He slammed Duncan's shield into the first of them, but his senses could find no end to their foes in either direction. The recruit from Rainesfere fell first.

* * *

Alistair crept back to Antiva but found no rest even there. The warmth of the air should have been a respite from Ferelden's hard winter, but he kept thinking about Sigrun's cold skin as he lay in his hot bed. Zevran and Neria had no comforting words, but did see him fed and comfortable and gave him very fine bottles of wine. Alistair's grief made Shartan uncomfortable, but he spent much of his time by now away from the house anyway, running his own small gang of village boys.

* * *

"Alistair is taking it very hard."

"Yes."

They readied themselves for bed in the lamplight and laid there, his leg over her hip, her fingers twined loosely through his. An hour later, when neither of them had yet fallen asleep, Zevran broke the silence with a whisper.

"How long…?"

"Seven years."

* * *

Surana was the one who came to Alistair and sat quietly by him, reading as he ignored her. He could not bring himself to respond to her small weight against his side as his mind wandered up along every memory he had of Sigrun's life, but still she stayed.

He had a conversation with Zevran and Neria about staying in Antiva for good, but in the end, he decided to return to Vigil's Keep, to honor his vows as Sigrun had honored hers. That night, when Surana had found him on the porch, she brought him a smooth grey stone with sparkling lines of white through it, dripping wet and shining.

"This is my favorite rock," she told him as she put it in his hand. "I think that the lines might have useful properties that I will discover when I grow up," she added, because it would not be very like eight year old Surana to admit that she kept something just because it was beautiful. "I found it under Mamma's window. I think that you should have it so that when you go back to Ferelden, you will have a bit of Antiva to keep in your pocket."

Finally Alistair found something inside of him soften. He opened his arm to her and tucked her against his side.

* * *

**_AN:_**_ I'd like to dedicate this chapter to zevgirl, who has been waiting for the other shoe to drop for several chapters now!_


	41. Chapter 41

Shartan was nodding slowly as Madre spoke. She said that water was in the air and that water moves but sometimes a mage can make water listen to stillness and then it becomes ice. Padre was playing a game with Ana's foot as he often did when Shartan and Madre spoke of magic at the dinner table, but Surana was ignoring him because Shartan's face was the very picture of confusion when it all made _perfect sense._

Surana opened her hand to the crystal water-jug and thought _hush, be still_ and it was. Frost climbed up the side of the crystal and fingers of hardening white shot down from the surface of the water.

"You see, that is what ice is," Zevran said with vast amusement as Madre and Shartan stared. "A practical demonstration such as this is probably easier than a description, I imagine."

* * *

She was breathing as if being chased and her fists twisted up in the sheets. Zevran frowned and was debating within himself yet again if waking her would be crueler than leaving her to sleep when she rolled out of bed and paced out of the room. Zevran's frown deepened. He cast off the bedding and slipped out of bed to follow her, soft as a shadow.

He found her in the living room tucked into a ball and trying to hide the sounds of her weeping against her knees. He fit his body around hers, pushed her head up against his shoulder. Her hands opened and closed against his skin and they both shook. He had never known her to sob like this, not when she broke her thigh bone, not even when the babies were born. Behind him, he knew the sound of the heavy footfalls that came and he waved Shartan away without looking. Their tall son crept up the hall again.

"Shhh, amora," he whispered, one hand cupping her head protectively, the other going up and down her back. "Come back to bed. It is only a dream. Shhh. Your calling is not to come for another year at least."

She shook her head as the violent sounds tore from her throat; she ground her face against his shoulder and neck to muffle them. Tears came to his own eyes and he struggled to breathe.

* * *

Surana heaved quick breaths and licked her lip as a trail of sweat trickled down from her cheek. The dull daggers felt glued to her hands.

"Again," said Padre.

She felt the length and reach of her limbs quickly with her mind. She was aware that clumsiness was a trap she could fall into at her age, and she would not allow it. She circled him, but he came at her and in the space of three seconds she was disarmed and pinned in the dirt. _Again._

He wasn't holding back. As he arose she tried to knee him between his legs and rake his face with her nails, using all of her strength because she knew what would happen. He twisted out of her reach and pinned her again in one smooth movement, as if this were a dance.

He got up and retrieved one of her daggers, skittering it across the ground toward her. "I had killed another by the time I was your age."

Surana gave him a sour look. "And who should I kill, papà?" She got up, feeling aches all over her thin body, and retrieved her daggers. He had never pushed her so hard. "You were whipped at my age."

He laughed bitterly in return. "Yes, this way is much slower. Again."

She circled him, watching for openings that _didn't exist_ unless he deliberately gave them to her. "I can't beat you in a fair fight!" she cried in frustration, wiping sweat from her eyes.

He used that motion of her wrist against her brow to surprise her, disarm her, flip her away and then catch her before she could land hard enough to truly hurt herself. He rolled onto the ground next to her. "There is no such thing as a fair fight, Ana," he answered, voice hard.

She rolled her head toward him. He was looking up at Madre, silent on the porch, and he looked agonized. And because Surana was the daughter of a Crow, she used this distraction of his to try to punch him in the throat.

He caught her hand before the blow landed and rolled out of her reach, abandoning his daggers and walking toward Madre. "Has anyone _ever_ defeated you?" Surana demanded.

"Only one person," he answered, then bowed his head as if somehow defeated now as he climbed to the porch. He cupped Madre's face, smearing dirt from his hands across her freckles.

* * *

Neria sat before their one mirror and watched Zevran move behind her. Her hair was to the middle of her back now and he was binding it in a tight braid. He looked only a little older than when they first met and his eyes were soft as he watched his hands work. He took up a dagger and set it against the hair at her nape.

"I love you," she told his reflection. He hesitated only briefly before slicing through her hair. He set the braid and dagger upon the table and her newly short hair fell into her face.

She tucked her hair behind her ear on one side as he did the same with the other and crouched before her. "Why are you saying all of these things that I already know?" His palm sheltered the line of her jaw and she could not find words that would move past her clotted throat. She looked away. "I know that we have been honest, most of the time," and never had she known him to use such a gentle tone, "but why don't we try… openness, too?"

Neria swallowed twice before looking back at his searingly beautiful face. "I do not want to go into the darkness of the deep roads thinking about how much I have not said."

Zevran's thumbs moved across her skin just under her eyes and she pinched them shut, reaching out to latch her hands on the hard swells of his upper arms. "Do not fear this," he said, his voice itself a caress. "I have watched you all of these long years and I see into you. There is nothing that you can tell me that I do not already know."

* * *

Five lamps were lit in the bedroom that night but his eyes were not open. His hands were tangled in the short wet fibers of her hair and his hair was glued across her face and he moved his mouth across the soft underside of her jaw like a blind man, drinking her sweat. "I love you, Neria," he rasped. "I love you so." She tightened around him in response and he gave a half-pained cry, spilling himself into her body yet again.

* * *

"The Chantry says that I will not be allowed by the Maker's side," said Neria as they walked toward the docks.

"Do not say such things," Zevran responded angrily. Neria ignored this and continued on, her hand gripped tight in his.

"…so I do not know what will happen to me after I die, but you should not worry. I will spend the years fighting to be where you will be, so that when you die, I will be there waiting. You will not be alone."

Zevran finally cracked. He pushed them against a building and hid his face in her hair as he wept like a child instead of a man of over fifty years. She was silent as she held him, hands gentle on his skin.

* * *

She stood on the edge of the deck, her hands clenching and unclenching at the railing, looking down at him on the pier. His arms were folded and his brows were down.

"Watch your back!" he finally shouted in frustration after she did not look away from him for some time, and she had to laugh, for she was going to her death and he was worried about her being _assassinated._

"I am going insane!" he shouted next after she didn't respond. "Say something!"

There was a brief, panicked pause as she tried to think of appropriate last words. Finally she leaned over and shouted back, "Your ass is magnificent in those pants!"

He laughed at this, the sound deep and rich, smiling through his tear-stained face. "You have ruined all other women for me!"

"Yours is truly the most muscular tongue that I have ever had the good fortune to know!"

"It has been my greatest pleasure to serve the whims of such a deadly sex goddess!"

"Be happy again!"

At this last one he scowled and looked away, but only a brief moment, for the ship was moving out with the tide swiftly now. He shouted something else, but she couldn't make out the words. She watched him and knew that he lingered, watching her, but all too soon, the shore was gone and Zevran with it.


	42. Chapter 42

Alistair rammed his shield into the recruit and swung his sword down to block the desperate blow that followed. "No," he said, words turning white in the cold air. "Wild swings like that will—"

"Alistair!"

He backed off and turned around. "Yes?" he said to the woman—one of the silver soldiers and he did not know her name.

"You'll never believe who is here! Neria Surana herself!"

* * *

Alistair pushed through a thick knot of people and there was Neria in the middle, wearing the ironwood armor that the Dalish had made for her, her hair all cropped short like in the old days. He grabbed her arm. "What's happened?"

She didn't answer but the polite mask of her face was briefly lifted as she shot a desperate look up at him. He put a hand between her shoulder blades and guided her toward the keep. "Excuse me! She's only just got in! Let me see her to a room!"

Nathaniel was striding toward them. "Neria? What have-?"

"Just _two minutes_, Nate. I'm really sorry. Please don't kill me." Alistair had Neria's arm now, propelling her quickly through the entrance and into the first storeroom they ran across. He shut the door and crouched down a bit to get a good look at her face. "What happened? Why are you here? The children—"

"It's my calling," she said, then switched to Antivan. "_Maker's balls, fuck me in the eye if I start crying in front of everyone."_ He understood it, but he'd had to learn those words from sailors rather than Shartan.

"Your calling? What? But… I haven't had mine yet and I took my joining before you." He watched her tighten her hands over her upper arms and turn in the room as if wishing there was enough room to pace.

"Yes, I know," she said, her words quick and brittle. "I'm never going to see him again. I'm never going to see them—" She took a deep breath. "It's fine. I'm fine."

Alistair put his arms around her. She gripped his pauldrons and put her face against the cold metal of his breastplate, breathing quickly.

* * *

One of the guards woke Alistair in the middle of the night. He found her in the great hall, pacing rings around the brazier.

"You know," he said, "You haven't lost _all_ of your family. You still have me."

She wept against his neck for so long that tears started running down his face, too. Eventually her exhaustion claimed her and she slept in his lap. He carried her back to her room and tucked her into bed. He took her cloak and lay down with it on her sofa like a guard dog, leaving her door open in the hopes of forestalling rumors.

* * *

Alistair brought down the blunted sword and she didn't bring up her shield quickly enough _again._ He knocked her off her feet. She scrambled up and darted away to give herself space; he didn't chase after her. He flicked a quick glance aside at all of the griffon tabards on the walls, the frowns of the wardens who had come to see their hero at work.

He was trying to work out how to save her pride when the first spell lifted him off of his feet and slammed him into the ground. He managed to dispel the second one, just barely, as he creakily got up. She had stepped into her fade shield and it hurt to look at the light that poured off of her.

"Metal-plated skirt-wearing freak!" she shouted and he had to laugh as Anders gave a wild cheer from the corner. He made his way toward her slowly, but it was like trying to move against a hurricane and her mana wouldn't give.

"I yield!" he shouted, still laughing, and the storm died away.

She whirled to face the younger Wardens, banged her shield with her pommel, then lifted her thin sword up high like a single brilliant shard of sunlight. She screamed her war-cry: "For the Grey Wardens!"

The roar that answered her was deafening and Alistair's voice was in it: _"For the Grey Wardens!"_

* * *

The first scream woke Alistair. The second scream had him stumbling out of the tent and around the campfire, passing faces that each showed the thought _This is how I will die, too_ in different ways. The third scream came as he ducked into Neria's tent, but the fourth scream was muffled in his chest. She awoke before the fifth came.

"I'm going into the deep roads with you," Alistair said.

"You don't need to do that. You have more time." Neria was scratching at her own flesh and he stared, for where her tunic had fallen away from her shoulder there was a wide patch of black flesh, blighted and wasting away.

"Barely any," he answered, his voice shaking now with conviction. "I won't let you face it alone. Please, Neria, if you argue I'll just follow you. I don't want to go alone either, my sister."

After this they shared a tent, and Alistair had a strong word with the men about rumors and how she had left a grieving spouse behind already.

* * *

He could see shades of darkness in the tunnels as he ran and knew the desperate hunger in the bodies around him. He stumbled as he tried to focus on a distant song—it almost called his name, he was sure. And then he put his hand into the corruption on the wall and jerked away, crying out in revulsion, and—

Alistair's eyes opened to see Neria's in the darkness. Her hand was carding through his hair. They were camped halfway up the Frostback Mountains. He convulsively ran his fingernails over the skin of his forearm. Yes, he would certainly go with her.

* * *

When Alistair woke from another nightmare in Orzammar's palace he found that Neria had somehow picked the lock and crept into his bed. She slept atop of the blankets, her body well insulated from his, but her hand was laid comfortingly over his and he loved her all over again, though not as much as he had loved Sigrun.

When they locked the great doors behind them, she reached out and took his gauntleted hand in hers. He looked down and saw that her eyes did not look so dead anymore, shining already with the lust for battle and the power of her spells.

* * *

This is an account of the deaths of the two Grey Wardens who stopped the fifth Blight:

The shrieks of the broodmother had just been quieted when they turned to face the sea of her brood. Back to back they fought until blows became heavy and mechanical and Neria had only occasional flickers of mana left.

She screamed Alistair's name and he turned to find that she was being lifted away by the darkspawn, claws on her arms and legs and waist and head. His sword was sure as it rammed through her body below the ribs, the blow hard enough that it ripped her away from their grasp.

Her sword and shield clattered down and she braced herself with hands on his breastplate as she hung there, impaled by the blade in his hand. Her blood flowed down his gauntlet. Their stunned eyes met for the space of two heartbeats before the forgotten foe behind Alistair swung its mace and struck his head from his body inches away from Neria's gaze. She fell as he did.

Neria laboriously turned against Alistair's body as they came for her again. She gathered up her remaining lifeblood and cast a massive spell upon her death. Darkspawn fell, writhing, in a wide circle around the corpses of the two Wardens.


	43. Epilogue

Twilight was coming and so was a stranger. Surana closed her mother's grimoire in silence and gently hid it beneath the branches. The stranger's footfalls were quiet, but by the weight of them she knew that he was a man, much bigger than her.

He was closer than she had judged when she stood and turned to him. He was too pale to be a native Antivan, she thought. "Stop," she ordered, but he just smiled at this and oh! with that smile her mouth went dry, for he was just _achingly_ beautiful. He had thick black hair and pale yellow eyes and he was so familiar, though she could not recall where she had met him.

When he continued to advance she opened her hand and called a magelight to it in a wordless display of her power. He still stepped closer on quiet feet and she hesitated before striking out, because something in his familiar face said _friend_.

He lifted his hand toward her and all at once distant childhood memories struck her: his face was just like uncle Alistair's. His hand covered her magelight and the power in his touch made it grow to a searing white that struck shadows from the heavens; she was blinded.

* * *

_**AN 2:**__ Thank you so much for reading my first fanfic! I love all of you so much that I could kiss you, and you are lucky because I am a super good kisser._

_I am currently working on two more Blood Poison fics, so check out my profile if you want to read more._

_I don't know that I would have finished it without all of the lovely encouragement you've given me! You are the best and that shirt looks really great on you!_


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